{"id":1388,"date":"2012-11-20T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T10:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/?p=1388"},"modified":"2012-11-20T06:38:31","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T11:38:31","slug":"if-only-there-were-a-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=1388","title":{"rendered":"If Only There Were a Sign!&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/MLMG042.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1389\" title=\"If Only There Were a Sign!...\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/MLMG042.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"386\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/MLMG042.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/MLMG042-300x206.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gdata.com\/?art=\/2012\/11\/MLMG042.jpg&amp;name=If Only There Were a Sign!...\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/buy.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Originally published in the <em>Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News<br \/>\n<\/em>November 18, 2012<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">When you&#8217;re good &#8212; when you&#8217;re really, really good &#8212; you get away with stuff. You can do things, and people say, &#8220;Oh, well, that&#8217;s so-and-so. He&#8217;s really good. Exceptional. Has a deeper understanding of things. Knows more than the rest of us. Just better, I guess.&#8221; And they can push that envelope just as far as they want.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">So in 1979, the really, really good cartoonist Pat Oliphant drew the following cartoon, which was printed in family newspapers:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/oliphant1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1395\" title=\"oliphant\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/oliphant1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"357\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/oliphant1.png 540w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/oliphant1-300x198.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">That&#8217;s Jimmy Carter speaking as the ant. And that&#8217;s Ted Kennedy as the grasshopper. As a teenage boy, I was obviously impressed with both the cussing and the scantily clad female. But as a budding cartoonist teenage boy, I was more impressed with how &#8212; by using the cussing and scantily clad female in context and with wit &#8212; Oliphant took a decent analogy to an Aesop Fable and made it absolutely hilarious. (The born-again President Carter would never say that! But that&#8217;s just how much Kennedy frustrated him!)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I remembered this cartoon as I was drawing my cartoon. I wanted the sign in panel 3 to read, &#8220;Fix the goddam roads!&#8221; I&#8217;m no fan of gratuitous cursing (as if any curse word truly has any shock value any more). And I understand and endorse the 4th commandment. But in a cartoon, funny is funny, and funny wins. Still, I knew that &#8220;goddam&#8221; wouldn&#8217;t get printed so I made my case for a simple &#8220;damn.&#8221; (It&#8217; s unlikely anybody would write swearing gibberish instead of an actual curse on a placard.) But understandably (alas), my editor opted for the gibberish. I still aspire to someday be Pat Oliphant&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News November 18, 2012 When you&#8217;re good &#8212; when you&#8217;re really, really good &#8212; you get away with stuff. You can do things, and people say, &#8220;Oh, well, that&#8217;s so-and-so. He&#8217;s really [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlive-media-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1400,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions\/1400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}