Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
February 19, 2012

The Michigan Republican presidential primary is coming up Tuesday, and candidate Romney still won’t give up on his “I would have let the American automakers fail” story. Props I suppose for not being wishy-washy. But it would probably be better for him if he would talk less about it. Michiganders tend to remember just how bad things were in 2008 and 2009. And many are intimately aware of how private bankruptcy works (and sometimes doesn’t work). So the he may be attracting a handful of ideologues, but come November it sure won’t help him carry Michigan.

Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
February 12, 2012

You know what’s creepy? Looking up images of “blackface” on the Internet so I could draw this properly. Definitely cringe-inducing, which I guess is the point of the cartoon. Pete Hoekstra, a former congressman from West Michigan, is running against incumbent Debbie Stabenow for the US Senate this year. The Hoekstra campaign created and ran an ad during the Super Bowl. Here’s a link to the backstory, although I don’t think the actual commercial is officially available anymore. The commercial featured an Asian woman speaking in broken English.

One of the problems with using cartoonish stereotypes (beyond the, you know, hurtful offensiveness) is that they don’t hold up very well. Talking in exaggerated Chinese-English may seem a perfectly legitimate to make a point to some people (but certainly not all) folks Hoekstra’s age, but I can’t believe there wasn’t one person, perhaps a 20-something, who would have said, “I dunno, Pete. This seems pretty sketchy.” Eighty years ago white entertainers in blackface was expected and acceptable. Now it makes your stomach queasy. For most outside the Hoekstra campaign, that’s where the Asian stereotype is today.

Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
February 5, 2012

Nearly 27 years ago, I talked myself into an appointment with the editorial page editor at the Flint Journal. I wanted to draw editorial cartoons for them. I didn’t want or expect a staff position or anything like that. I just wanted to provide cartoons, have them publish them, and get paid some amount of money. (I had no idea what amount.)

So one late summer afternoon, armed with 10 or so cartoons drawn on spec, I entered the hallowed halls of journalism. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but I do remember that he was generally unenthused. He was nice enough to talk with me, but it was clear I was something that got added to his to-do list and he now wanted only to check it off. That’s the thing that annoyed me — he was intent of giving me the standard quick-tour and have me be impressed that I had seen the inner sanctum. But at that point I had drawn cartoons for and worked in newspapers and printers. I understood how it worked; I knew how it sounded, how it smelled. I was interested in going to the next level. (Truth is, I very likely was impossibly unprepared for “going to the next level,” but youthful naïveté and willful delusion are a powerful combination for learning — I was willing to take the chance at likely failure.)

Soon enough I was out the door and with no real follow-up plan. No regrets, though. Things turned out all right. I graduated from college, I got me a job, I continued to draw cartoons, and I can afford to wear as many socks on my feet as I can fit, which is nice because my feet are otherwise very, very cold. AND, when visiting Flint this weekend, my father-in-law brought me a page of his Flint Journal with the very cartoon you see at the top printed on it. If this was a beer commercial, this is where all my fashionable pub friends and women in various stages of undress would hoist a glass to me (well, not actually me — a much better-looking actor playing the role of me) with a “you’ve made it, why not drink beer?” tagline and raucous laughter at something really not all that funny.

Thank God it isn’t a beer commercial, because that’d be the end, and I’m really looking forward to drawing more cartoons.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, January 28, 2011

This is my last cartoon for Saturday editions of the Grand Rapids Press. Starting this week — and as a small part of a major reorganization — my cartoon will be in the Sunday edition of the Press as well as several other Michigan newspapers. More on all of this soon!

Opening night was awesome! Grandville does an excellent job with this quirky, funny play.

Shows tonight and Saturday at 7:00PM. Click here for details: http://gpsblogs.org/ghstheater/

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, January 21, 2011

Unlike, say, the UK’s parliamentary system where the executive leader (the prime minister) is also the leader of his/her political party, our system is set up so the executive leader (the president, or in the case of a state, the governor) is merely a member of the party. So our executive doesn’t necessarily have obligations to narrowly follow the party line. This is a good thing. Unless you’re a Republican legislator in Michigan and you want your damn Republican governor to narrowly follow your damn party line….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, January 14, 2011

Justin Amash is our US congressman from Grand Rapids. He’s a Republican and a freshman and can generally be lumped together with the other tea party influence newbies from the class of 2010. I say generally because he tends to vote like them, but Amash definitely thinks for himself and is nothing if not his own person. He has very high standards, he takes his job seriously, and seems to be quite keen on representing his constituents well. I think he’s a good guy. But then, it’s also the sacred duty of an editorial cartoonist to poke fun at the deeply ideological….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, January 7, 2011

I was hoping to be less right about the third panel than I actually was — for Jane’s sake….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, December 31, 2011

This is a pretty inside joke for West Michiganders. You can click here for some context, but here’s the basic story: The piece that won ArtPrize this year was “Crucifixion,” a stained-glass mosaic of Jesus Christ on a cross. This did not sit well with some who saw it as purposely pandering to the Christian inclination of West Michigan. There was some interesting debate around the topic. But the most interesting thing to me is how a few just would not let it go. I thought it’d be funny if this was their very first thought of the new year….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, December 24, 2011

I have to compliment myself on this one. Not so much the cartoon (it’s okay — it was fun drawing Uncle Sam, but I never did get his hands right). No, it was the timing. I had to get this one done Wednesday morning before Christmas. At that point, the Senate’s two-month extension of the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment benefits was considered dead in the House. I gambled the deal would get done (including the nonsensical bit about fastracking an oil pipeline) by Saturday. Then, blamo!, Friday it went through. It was, well… for America it was yet another partisan politics debacle. But for me it was a Christmas Miracle!