Auchtoon!

Michigan Radio ran a story this week where the city council of Hillsdale, Michigan is considering an ordinance that would basically criminalize anything related to having an abortion within the city limits. Obviously any story about abortions comes packed with visceral feelings and opinions. But what struck me about this particular story was its nuances and complexities (and how it was told).

I encourage you to read the whole article, but briefly, the wife of a Hillsdale city council member asked a Texas-based pastor to come to town to promote his “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn” initiative. She collected signatures of support and brought it up in the public comment portion of a meeting this week. Hillsdale is famously a conservative town, so it was hard to find opposition to the idea itself, but there was plenty of concerns about how it was executed.

What I found most interesting was watching a community determine how far it is willing to go for an end to justify the means. Is it okay to skirt rules, bypass convention, take some shortcuts? And if so, then how about rigging the game, locking down the opposition, declaring rule by fiat? Would that be okay, too? It will be interesting to see how all this plays out in Hillsdale.

I’m on vacation this week. Prudently applying mosquito spray as necessary. Hope you’re getting to enjoy some time off, too!

Full disclosure: I am a member of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists. I am not Canadian, nor do I have any Canadian clients. But a few years ago at a joint convention with the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists — the professional organization for U.S. cartoonists — the Canadians invited me to join their organization, too. Being based in Michigan, I draw an occasional Canada-related cartoon, and that was good enough for them. (There is a reason for the stereotype — they really are incredibly nice.)

But I am an American and proud to be one. I will be in full-throated support of our American athletes at the Olympics in the coming weeks. Already this week I woke up at 4:30AM to watch our women soccer team’s game against Sweden (and felt like throwing up after they crushed us, 3–0). They worry me now. Our men’s basketball team worries me. Simone Biles does not worry me.

I just wanted to say that to make clear that I can see both perspectives of the recent churning over who is going to be letting whom into their country. Last week, Canada announced plans to open (with restrictions) their borders to non-essential travel from the U.S. This week, the U.S. announced it was extending current restrictions on nonessential travel from Canada through August 21.

It’s complicated: Unlike Canada, the U.S. has a second significant border to manage. Officials have to take into consideration the increasingly dangerous Delta variant, vaccination levels, short and long-term economic implications. And most Michiganders know that it has always been way more strict (and stressful) coming into the U.S. than going into Canada.

Still, from the Canadian perspective, I can imagine how they would currently be perceiving us as boorish and selfish. I mean, the fact that we’re making them pay the whole cost of building a badly needed second bridge between Detroit and Windsor (for our mutual economic benefit) — that kind of sets the tone, right? At least we’re building bridges and not fences.

Undermine is a good word. It’s very intuitive from its roots what it means. Is there a category for those types of words? It’s not quite an onomatopoeia, or is it? Perhaps Rebecca Kruth can help me out with this.

In any case, under and mine together creates a clear picture:

1. erode the base or foundation of (a rock formation).
“the flow of water had undermined pillars supporting the roof”

2. lessen the effectiveness, power, or ability of, especially gradually or insidiously.
“this could undermine years of hard work”

Let me add another:

3. ruin an already tenuous trust

“the Michigan UIA again undermined the notion that our government is of the people, by the people, for the people”

This week, just as Democrats and the Biden Administration continue to build the case for a more helpful and reliable government, the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency (as reported by Bridge Magazine) dropped this little nugget:

Nearly one-fifth of the Michigan residents who received unemployment payments during the pandemic are now learning their eligibility for jobless benefits didn’t meet federal standards.

Michigan officials will reevaluate claims filed by 690,092 people. The vast majority — 648,000 — will have to confirm their jobless status from a different set of criteria and may learn they weren’t eligible for funds they already received.

Even worse, the Michigan UIA has a well-documented past of grinding up unfortunate souls who have gotten caught in its machinery. It’s pretty awful. But does it prove that all government is fundamentally bad? I don’t think so. The Michigan UIA is to government what Enron was to capitalism — a really bad instance that undermines the whole thing.

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to add much this week. Unfortunate because there is plenty to add, particularly on the half year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection.

But quickly, in regards to the Toyota story: It wouldn’t be such a story if Toyota (along with several other corporations) hadn’t pledged shortly after the events of January 6th to reconsider their political contributions to those who still voted not to certify the election. It’s fine for a corporation to change its mind or even to feign concern for PR purposes. They will do what they perceive as what’s in their best interest.

But then they shouldn’t be surprised to suffer the consequences. Especially when no other company is even close to the amount of money or number of donations that Toyota has made.

With ongoing posturing around spending bills in Washington, the building collapse in Florida, record high temps in the Pacific Northwest, and our own deluge of rain here in Michigan, this past week has seen plenty of opinions expressed over infrastructure and global climate change.

Which is fine and expected and, actually, necessary. There’s a lot going on that affects our lives directly and indirectly, so it’s reasonable for us to try to reconcile it.

That said, do we have to express our opinions with such confidence? Especially when those opinions are counter to what a consensus of experts are saying? You may believe that the state of our nation’s infrastructure is just fine or that climate change is a bunch of hooey, but have you considered that you might be wrong? Like that time you thought you could make it through that puddle?

It’s good to question what experts tell us — be curious, ask questions, challenge authority. But it’s not so good to dismiss what they say altogether.

In the classic TV sitcom Cheers, know-it-all barfly, Cliff Clavin often filled gaps in conversation with unsolicited information — absurd, totally unbelievable, easily disproven information — but delivered with complete confidence. A particular favorite example of mine had Cliff offering his long-suffering buddies, Norm and Frasier, this little nugget:

“Yeah, it’s a genetic quirk in the Clavin family that we all have two extra teeth. Ya see, that’s the only way that we can prove that we are the rightful heirs to the Russian throne.”

There’s a perfect comedic pause and then Frasier says, “Hello in there, Cliff.” Another pause. “Tell me — what color is the sky in your world?” 

Fellow Americans, we have always had Cliff Clavins in our country. Lots of them. I imagine that most countries do. But we seem to have made the unfortunate mistake these past few years of actually listening to them.

Seriously. We gotta stop doing that.

https://www.michiganradio.org/post/senate-gop-probe-no-systemic-fraud-michigan-election

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/gop-investigation-finds-no-michigan-vote-fraud-deems-many-claims-ludicrous

This week saw further developments in the sex abuse tragedy in which a former doctor, Richard Anderson, sexually assaulted athletes and students over the 36 years he worked for the University of Michigan. Survivors have now stepped forward to urge the University of Michigan and its Board of Regents to take accountability for its failure to protect students.

It’s really quite sickening. Frankly, I found looking at the reference images of dead rats taped to my drawing board much less stomach-churning than reading about what happened and how it was allowed to go on for so long.

All I can add is that now is the exact worst time to bring up talk of “let’s get past this” and “we need to move on” because “what’s done is done” and “that was a long time ago.” 

The lessons are all there. Larry Nassar, Jerry Sandusky. The Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America. What good came from covering up their abuses or trying to move quickly past them? Not a single thing. We know too well the terrible consequences of allowing the weak and venerable to be preyed upon and then attempting to cover up the wreckage.

If this scandal is not properly investigated, if healing light is not allowed to expose the guilty and lift up the survivors, more and more rats will die off in the shadows, and the stench might never go away.

I’m sometimes asked what my motivations are for drawing editorial cartoons. Am I trying to convince readers to agree with my point of view? Evangelize? Score points? And the answer is, no … mostly. I mean, there is always a small slice of ego that longs to be validated, right? The idea that people read my cartoons and say, “You know, before seeing this I held the exact opposite view, but now that my eyes have been opened by this man’s scathingly brilliant observations, and I have come to complete agreement! Also, my sides have split with laughter.”

No, in reality it is something much less ambitious. More often than not, I’m simply expressing a thought and hoping to spark further thought. No winning or losing an argument. No promoting a particular ideology. And certainly no converting.

I’m sharing this with you this particular week because I really don’t have anything to add to the cartoon itself. I’m incredulous that anybody would think that an additional audit of the 2020 election here in Michigan would be a good idea (especially by a private firm). And I’m equally incredulous that anybody would think that a 9/11-style commission on the events of January 6th would be a bad idea. I hope that makes you think about that, too.

It was a pretty straight path to the cartoon this week. I was reading an article in the Detroit Free Press about newly proposed bills in the state legislature to use $25 million of federal COVID-19 relief funds to staff up at the Secretary of State offices. Lengthy closings because of the pandemic created a backlog of Michiganders needing to update licenses, register vehicles, and so on.

So the idea is to use one-time money that doesn’t come out of our budget to solve a problem that affects nearly all of us. If ever there was something we can all agree on, thought I, this was it. But then I read on. 

It seems it was a couple of Democrats (Rep. Stephanie Young, D-Detroit, Rep. Julie Brixie, D-Meridian Township) behind the bills. I would not have been surprised if it had been two Republicans, but apparently it matters.

The bills are written with the forward-looking objective of improving service. The SOS offices would expand on the current appointment system, aiming to build flexibility and efficiency into the system as a hedge against future disruptions. Republicans would prefer to simply open offices back up with the pre-pandemic take-a-number system. You know, the one that pretty much everyone (including the workers) loathe. Why? I don’t know. It could be that they are still not totally onboard with preventing sickness and death. It could be that it simply wasn’t their idea.

See? This is why we can’t have nice (or even simple) things.