Auchtoon!

Telling the wife of your boss at a dinner party that she is a racist is not a career enhancing move. Turns out, people don’t like to be called racist — even if they are.

Let me explain. Many years ago my boss at the time generously hosted a holiday dinner for his three employees and their spouses. I was sitting next to his wife and in the course of conversation she mentioned growing up in Grand Rapids and her not-so-positive experience with school integration. She had some lingering issues and asked me my assessment.

In a very academic (maybe even Aspergerian) way I told her, yes, I thought she was racist, but qualified it with my mini-thesis on what that means: There are three degrees of racism. First degree is a negative view of somebody else because of their race and openly acting on that negative view (think Archie Bunker). Second degree is a patronizing view of somebody else because of their race (think of kindly people of previous generations, “I feel sorry for colored people.”) Third degree is simply letting a person’s race affect how you treat that person, however small that effect may be.

I told her, like most Americans (including myself), she was probably a third-degree racist. Only the very young and the exceptionally pure are not racist. Still, it didn’t go over well. Also, I had a hard time hiding the fact that I really didn’t care for the mutton that was served, so that didn’t help.

If you are ever faced with a similar situation, my advice would be to avoid rolling out a mini-thesis. And if you can’t deflect the issue altogether, have a discussion instead of forcing a “teaching moment,” which is what I tried to do with this week’s cartoon. How’d I do? (If you feel compelled to call me an idiot, please qualify with what degree.)

If you spend more than a few moments with my wife’s family, there is a pretty good chance you’re going to hear a Caddyshack reference. That is, a quote from the 1980 film will work its way into the conversation — sometimes in context, always funny. So coming off a week’s vacation with them, it’s not hard to find the inspiration for the punch line in panel three of the cartoon. “You’ll get nothing and like it!” is of course how Judge Smails shuts down his grandson, Spalding, as the teen lists off what he wants to order at the snack shack.

Dang if that doesn’t capture the essence of the Attorney General, Bill Schuette, who in his tenure has made a habit of actively shutting down the desires of his citizenry. The straight-ticket ballot issue is the latest example. Michigan voters have demonstrated their preference to support a political party’s entire slate of candidates with a single mark on a ballot. Schuette is fighting with particular zest to uphold new legislation that bans straight-ticket balloting, and it feels like more for political advantage than out of a sense of duty.

I know. Shocker. Politics affecting the office of Attorney General! This is certainly not unique to Republicans or Bill Schuette. (Goodness knows that Democrat Jennifer Granholm leveraged the heck out of being AG to get her governor gig.) And I absolutely don’t support the idea that the AG should automatically endorse whatever the majority opinion happens to be. I think American history has proven just how wrong the majority can be.

But that doesn’t mean Schuette shouldn’t be called out for Smails-like behavior. It was actually a different scene from the movie that inspired the cartoon, but I couldn’t figure out how to work it in. It’s the part where Judge Smails is trying to impress young Danny Noonan with the need for laws and righteousness.

Danny, Danny, there’s a lot of, uh, well, badness in the world today. I see it in court every day. I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t wanna do it. I felt I owed it to them.

There is nothing quite as annoying as the overenthusiastic zeal that comes with the recently discovered — especially when it has been commonly known and readily accessible for years and years. So I apologize in advance, but, OHMYGOSH, YOU GUYS! HAVE YOU SEEN THE SOO LOCKS?! THEY ARE AWESOMINGLY AMAZING!!!

Last month, I finally made my first visit to Sault Ste Marie to see the Soo Locks. You just can’t fit the scale of a freighter being transferred from one great lake to another in your head until you actually see it. It’s absolutely magnificent. And the tour is even better. A ferry takes you through the locks — up from the American side and down on the Canadian.

It was all so very impressive, but there was one fact that made a particular impression on me. It’s free. That’s right, free. I had no idea. Whether you’re a freighter fully laden with taconite and heading for the steel mills or a pleasure boat on you’re way to Pictured Rocks, you pay nothing. All of us taxpayers foot the bill. And it makes a lot of sense. For the sake of commerce and industry, to promote transportation, to eliminate overhead costs of collecting fees, it’s free to the actual users.

Look, it’s no secret that traditional public transportation is lacking in Michigan, especially Metro Detroit. And I’m not trying to make a direct parallel between a commuter bus/light-rail system and the Soo Locks. But I am saying that they share a common benefit: they are good for business. Yes, it takes some capital investment, but there can be a much greater return on that value. And isn’t that how business is supposed to work? We have underfunded our roads for years, and see where that has gotten us.

In the cartoon series South Park, there is a classic episode titled “Gnomes.” In that episode, a high-strung, over-caffeinated boy named Tweek is freaked out when gnomes repeatedly sneak into his bedroom at night to steal his underpants from his dresser. Tweek tells his fellow grade-school friends about the gnomes, but they don’t believe him.

Then one night when some classmates are all over at Tweek’s house very late working on a school report, they all witness the gnomes in action. They follow the gnomes back to their underground operation and ask the obvious question: Why are you stealing underpants? The gnomes tell the boys that they are business experts and collecting underpants is the first step of a three-phase plan:

Step 1: Collect underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!

The boys are curious to know, “What is Step 2?” The gnomes discuss this among themselves and conclude they don’t really know. There is a pause, but then they reaffirm that they are in fact business experts and cheerfully get back to working on their plan.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump was in Detroit to give a speech on his economic plan. Hillary Clinton was in Michigan Thursday to lay out her plan. I can’t address Clinton’s speech directly (it was after my deadline), but I can assume that like Trump’s, it was short on “Step 2” details. I get it. There are few motivations for presidential candidates to provide specifics — they will get picked apart.

But the Trump speech sounded very much like the gnomes’ plan, especially by including that old “let’s put a moratorium on regulations” chestnut. In fact, his whole campaign has been extremely lacking in how he plans to do the things he says he wants to do. (“Believe me, believe me” doesn’t count as a plan.) To be fair, in his business world Trump does sometimes have a Step 2, which is “declare bankruptcy.”

But in Michigan, Flint’s water has shown us what can happen when politicians skip over Step 2.

There are few universally shared experiences these days. The ability to indulge our varied interests makes points of intersection increasingly rare. One of the few exceptions is layoffs. Whether you have direct experience with the swinging axe or just near misses, we are all familiar with the type of “right-sizing” recently announced at Dow in mid-Michigan.

Layoffs are never pleasant. Some are reasonable (sales are down, costs are up, something has to give). Some are anything but reasonable (the CEO pooped his pants and the company needs to create a distraction, stockholders want to build indoor pools at their beach houses, somebody said we might save tens of dollars if we move the whole works to Uzbekistan). I’m not ready to judge the Dow layoffs. (Oh, I will most definitely judge; I’m just not ready.)

What I am ready to do is propose a challenge: I would like somebody to quantify the psychological cost of things like layoffs at Dow, Flint’s water crisis, and our lousy infrastructure. We hear all the time from economists about the positive effects of companies streamlining. What about the negative effects?

My unit of measurement would be a gut-punch. A gut-punch by itself is not inherently bad. It might wake you up — make you take stock and plan ahead. But continuous gut-punches wear people down and make us desperate: You’re laid-off your good-paying job. Ooof. You retrain, get a new job, and someone else is laid off, leaving you with five times the responsibility but at the same pay. Ooof. You work hard, develop new efficiencies, but then you’re laid-off. Ooof.

So what’s the collective number of gut-punches that tip the scales toward desperation? If we knew that, maybe we could avoid the recklessness of having Donald Trump as a viable candidate for President. Ooof.

In her later years, my wife’s grandmother suffered from dementia. She was the same extraordinarily sweet, wonderful person she always had always been, but her short-term memory faded and her filter disappeared. For a time she lived with my wife’s family. Their formal dining room became her bedroom — it was easy to keep tabs on her from the adjacent kitchen.

She would go to her room to watch the TV news, and as my wife did her homework in the kitchen, she could hear Nana talking to the news anchor or reporter as she watched. “That’s not your real hair…. That cannot be your real hair…. That’s gotta be a wig…. That can’t be your real hair….” <pause, when apparently a new person appeared on screen> “Boy, you are fat…. You are really fat…. Fat, fat, fat….” <pause> “That’s not your real hair…. That cannot be your real hair….” And so it went. Not hearing a single word of what the anchor was saying.

I couldn’t help but to think of Nana when watching Mayor Duggan’s speech. Folks outside of Michigan (and many within) probably would have guessed that the mayor of Detroit was a black guy named Kwame McColeman or something and got stuck on the fact that Duggan is white (completely missing the point of his speech).

It’s the irony that got me: Duggan trying to de-emphasize racial differences only to have people pay attention solely to his racial difference. But talking about race in America is tricky. It can be awkward, feel uncomfortable, even seem counter-productive. And often, people do completely miss the point. (President Obama can’t get near the subject without being accused of “playing the race card.”)

But if you listened to the speech I think Duggan is on the right track. The most important thing is to keep the conversation open so that all can be heard. Set goals where “everyone will be equally valued and everyone will have real opportunity,” but realize that it’s a process. And maybe one day when all of our filters have disappeared, we will be focused on Duggan being a pudgy bald guy and not the color of his skin.

I’ve worked in the business world for quite some time now. From private to public companies, startups to established corporations, employee to contractor. I even had my own company for a dozen years. So I think I have a fairly broad understanding. Still, I’ve never really bought into the idea that being a successful business person necessarily will make you a good public servant.
Sure, things like the desire to be in charge, being a good steward of resources, knowing when to inspire and when to delegate — those are going to be helpful whether you’re CEO or governor. But functionally, the two jobs are very different animals. An elected leader needs to embrace the integrity of a purposely restricted system (laws); private business owners are ultimately only responsible to themselves.
It scares me when those promoting the idea don’t seem to be aware of the differences (or willfully ignore them). Ironically, many of Donald Trump’s standard business practices align more readily with the worst behaviors of a government bureaucrat: reneging on deals, aggressive deficit spending, opaque and authoritarian rule.
I just don’t see how “I will run the government like a business” would be an easy sell to Michigan voters. Especially when Governor Snyder already seems to have, um, poisoned those waters.

A cop shoots a man dead. Is your first thought to want to know their racial profiles?

A man uses a military assault rifle to kill multiple people. Is your first thought to hope for a reason that won’t conflict with your political views?

A neighborhood teen takes his own life with a handgun. Is your first thought to wonder why a handgun was available to him at a moment of despair?

A young woman is gunned down in Chicago. Is your first thought to consider how this might affect gun control statistics?

A homeowner uses a gun to kill somebody on his property. Is your first thought to feel gratification for justice served?

A little girl finds a loaded gun in her house and shoots her younger sibling. Is your first thought to ask whether the gun was legal?

Do you see where I’m going with this? When your life intersects with stories of guns and death, is your first instinct to align the news with your politics? Or is it to consider the loss of human life?

It’s the politics, right? Me, too.

But maybe making the loss of life our first thought would be a real starting point for reducing gun violence.

Last month, Rick DeVos complained aloud via Twitter that the state flag of Michigan was “ugly” and “non-useful.” Well, sharing needlessly judgmental observations is what Twitter is for, so we likely would have all moved quickly on to the next snark if DeVos wasn’t (a) the founder of ArtPrize and (b) offering $500 to the best three redesigns. At the time I was going to do a cartoon with three of my own submissions. But as is often the case, a different idea came along and overtook it. I figured this one had missed its opportunity.

However… that absolutely gorgeous, thoroughly enjoyable Independence Day weekend messed me up. I found myself happy, refreshed, and generally pleased with life, which is like kryptonite for editorial cartooning. From the void of my contentment, the flag idea resurfaced. When I realized that the winners have not yet been announced, I thought it might still have a chance.

I didn’t want to do the three submissions thing, though — that definitely seemed past its freshness date. The strongest gag idea I had was the “what’s Latin for ‘crumbling infrastructure’?” bit. (The second best: “If you seek a perilous pothole, look around you.”) With the theme established, I was inclined to bring in our Governor Snyder and have an underling take a jab at him for his abysmal performance on infrastructure issues. A quick reflection on the money my family sinks into car repair every year because of said infrastructure issues, and I was no longer happy (and therefore ready to draw).

As for the current flag — yes, it is a design mess with its mishmash of odd choices and conflicting ideas, but it also has a unique beauty. I think that’s a pretty good description of Michigan.

I was trying to work up some righteous indignation about Michigan’s fireworks laws and the decision in 2011 to allow in-state sales of the loud, semi-dangerous variety. Maybe it was being awoken at 1:00AM Tuesday by somebody’s sudden need to express their patriotism very close to my bedroom window. Maybe it’s the messes left in the park and cemetery next to my house by people who apparently don’t like to explode things on their own property. Maybe I’ve begun my official decent into grumpy old manhood. I dunno. It’s hard to tell — I’m still kinda sleep deprived.

Whatever the case, I couldn’t seem to sustain a good righteousness or indignation. Truth is, I’ve done my fair share of setting off “Chinese explosives of questionable legality.” Not recently, but certainly in younger days. (I bonded with my eventual brothers-in-law by repeatedly strapping a hapless plastic army soldier we called Fritz to bottle rockets.) And fireworks are only the surface of a very deep pile of stupid things I’ve done.

I think that’s the thought that stopped me: We live in a free country, but freedom doesn’t necessarily align with smart.

So I wish you all a happy and safe Independence Day! We are all free to decide our own level of stupid (but let’s try to keep it to a minimum).