{"id":4376,"date":"2025-10-17T10:51:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T14:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=4376"},"modified":"2025-10-17T10:51:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T14:51:56","slug":"history-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=4376","title":{"rendered":"History Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/JPA519.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"407\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/JPA519.jpg\" alt=\"Political cartoon: History Lesson\" class=\"wp-image-4377\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/JPA519.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/JPA519-300x218.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier this week, I had the idea for this cartoon percolating in my head. I felt the &#8220;history lesson&#8221; would fit well with the No Kings events this weekend. And then&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/10\/14\/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Politico broke the story of the Young Republicans leaders<\/a>&nbsp;and their hateful, disgusting &#8220;I love Hitler&#8221; private messaging, with Vice President JD Vance subsequently coming to their defense. So now it&#8217;s so topical I kind of want to throw up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are not already familiar with Father Charles Coughlin, you can check out the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_Coughlin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Wikipedia article<\/a>. But in short:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>&#8220;Dubbed &#8216;The Radio Priest\u200a&#8217; and considered a leading demagogue, he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience. During the 1930s, when the U.S. population was about 120 million, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned in to his weekly broadcasts.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Coughlin was sort of the populist podcaster of his day. I learned about him from Mr. Winchester in my American History class junior year at Flint Powers High School. What&#8217;s more, I remember the actual takeaway from the lesson: We Americans had our own demagogues, authoritarians, and fascists in the 1930s. But we ultimately had the good sense not to put them in charge of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, I&#8217;m afraid and ashamed to say we&#8217;ve lost that good sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I had the idea for this cartoon percolating in my head. I felt the &#8220;history lesson&#8221; would fit well with the No Kings events this weekend. And then&nbsp;Politico broke the story of the Young Republicans leaders&nbsp;and their hateful, disgusting &#8220;I love Hitler&#8221; private messaging, with Vice President JD Vance subsequently coming to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganpress-org","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376","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=4376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4378,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376\/revisions\/4378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}