{"id":2583,"date":"2016-12-02T08:35:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T13:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2016-12-02T08:35:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T13:35:00","slug":"betsy-devos-told-them-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=2583","title":{"rendered":"Betsy DeVos Told Them To"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Betsy<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When the president-elect nominated Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education last week, the most obvious metaphor seemed to be the fox put in charge of the hen-house. I rolled that around in my head for awhile but couldn’t make it work. I don’t think DeVos is that carnivorous or the education establishment that docile. (Plus drawing anthropomorphic characters is not really my strong suit. So, as is often the case, laziness wins.)<\/p>\n

This cartoon worked much better because it reveals my main issue with the DeVos nomination: She’s a crank. A crank (for lack of a better term, let me know if there is one) is a person caught up in her own thoughts, plans, and ideology — dogmatically indifferent to the consequences. It’s been my experience that nearly every organization has one — work group, school board, sports team, professional society, whatever.<\/p>\n

And for the most part, it’s good to have a crank. They provide a vital service: They keep everybody else honest. Nobody wants to set the crank off, so we tend to plan more carefully. For example, say you’re the chair of a church committee to raise funds for a mission trip. There is consensus for a pancake breakfast, but there is a crank on the finance team who believes with all her heart that using food for fundraising is a grave sin. If indeed you want to move forward, you will make sure to organize a solid and defensible plan. (Or you may decide to go with a bikini car wash instead, which oddly she has no problem with.)<\/p>\n

But the last thing you want is for the crank to be in charge. Cranks by their nature are “my way or the highway” types and likely with a chip on the shoulder from having been handled and circumvented so much in the past. (Think Dwight Schrute from the TV series “The Office.”)<\/p>\n

Of course, I’m prejudging here. Ms. DeVos may turn out to be the second coming of Eleanor Roosevelt — a determined woman from the privileged class who used her position to serve the poor and disenfranchised. But if I had to bet, I’d put my money on Dwight Schrute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the president-elect nominated Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education last week, the most obvious metaphor seemed to be the fox put in charge of the hen-house. I rolled that around in my head for awhile but couldn’t make it work. I don’t think DeVos is that carnivorous or the education establishment that docile. (Plus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrewheller-com","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","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=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}