{"id":198,"date":"2008-09-12T10:42:58","date_gmt":"2008-09-12T15:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/12\/politcal-conventions-change-the-channel\/"},"modified":"2008-09-12T10:42:58","modified_gmt":"2008-09-12T15:42:58","slug":"politcal-conventions-change-the-channel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=198","title":{"rendered":"Politcal Conventions &#8212; Change the #%@&#038; Channel&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"GRBJ0671.gif\" alt=\"GRBJ0671.gif\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/images\/grbj\/GRBJ0671.gif\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Originally published in the <em>Grand Rapids Business Journal<\/em>, September 1, 2008<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t watch much of either political convention. Again, as an alleged editorial cartoonist I should probably show more interest for such things or at least lie and tell you that I immersed myself in the speeches to marinade in the\u00a0subtle flavors so as to detect and then share the truth behind the scenes. But seriously, there ain&#8217;t no behind-the-scenes &#8212; they&#8217;re pep rallies! Pep rallies for the believers and the bought (and the believers who don&#8217;t realize they&#8217;ve been bought).<\/p>\n<p>I did flip by one night, and I don&#8217;t remember which one it was but there was a guy delivering a stilted rah-rah with the repeat phrase, &#8220;Yes we can!&#8221; So, him: &#8220;Quasi-motivational reference to action affecting a positive outcome of a supposed party platform item.&#8221; Pause. Then Crowd: &#8220;Yes we can!&#8221; And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. I watched fascinated by the awkwardness of it all &#8212; the D-List speaker straining for legitimacy, the attempts of the camera to catch a delegate with sincere enthusiasm, the tension of a thousand of pundits desperately trying to churn up any sort of opinion before the guy finished. When my dear wife broke me from my spell with a, &#8220;change the <expletive> channel &#8212; my head is going to explode.&#8221; So that was it for conventions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, September 1, 2008 I didn&#8217;t watch much of either political convention. Again, as an alleged editorial cartoonist I should probably show more interest for such things or at least lie and tell you that I immersed myself in the speeches to marinade in the\u00a0subtle flavors so as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-business-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","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=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}