{"id":726,"date":"2010-10-14T08:43:36","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T13:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/?p=726"},"modified":"2010-10-14T08:43:36","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T13:43:36","slug":"the-devoss-new-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=726","title":{"rendered":"The DeVos’s New House…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press<\/em>, October 9, 2010<\/p>\n

A few week\u2019s ago, the Grand Rapids Press ran a story on the recently completed summer home built on the south shore of Lake Macatawa near Holland. It is owned by the DeVos family. Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel were founders of Amway Corporation, their families continue to run Amway, and have since created, developed, married into, and spawned many, many other ventures. Long story short, the DeVos\u2019s are a prominent and successful West Michigan family.<\/p>\n

So the article was basically \u201cfabulously wealthy local family has existing mansion plowed and builds a magnificent new house and guest house in its place.\u201d If nothing else, it made for attractive first page photos. Shortly thereafter the letters to the editor started rolling in regarding \u201cin poor taste\u201d this and \u201cin these times of economic hardship\u201d that. How dare the Press make this a headline story!\u00a0 Then the counter letters started to show up with their \u201cproviding paying jobs\u201d this and \u201cyou\u2019re just jealous, so go suck an egg\u201d that. It devolved from there. Which is all very understandable if not predictable — people have strong feelings and a baffling conviction that a letter to the editor or a post to a chat forum will convince the world to see it their way. But the truly remarkable thing was just how well sustained the argument. It has been a serious collective panty bunch for West Michigan for several weeks. The comic was my attempt at hastening the unbunching process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, October 9, 2010 A few week\u2019s ago, the Grand Rapids Press ran a story on the recently completed summer home built on the south shore of Lake Macatawa near Holland. It is owned by the DeVos family. Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel were founders of Amway Corporation, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","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=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}