By John Auchter
To be clear: I’m proud of our nation, our history, and especially our ideals. I am proud to be an American. But some of the things we do just mystify me.
Last week the Michigan Board of Education approved an update to the curriculum for social science studies in Michigan. There was some controversy. Initially, some standards proposed by conservatives hewed too closely to their unique views of the world. Those were cut back, but the standards approved by the Board have been assailed as inaccurate and anti-Christian. It all seems like an excellent prompt for a classroom of young minds to learn civil discourse and critical thinking. But unfortunately it’s mostly a crude game for political points.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be reacting (overreacting?) to all this in a normal week. But this is the week that The New York Times decided it would no longer run political cartoons. A brief backstory: In April, a Times editor decided to run a syndicated cartoon in its international edition depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog wearing a Star of David collar tag and leading a blind, yarmulke-wearing President Trump. It was widely seen as anti-Semitic. Because it was.
The Times appropriately apologized and promised corrective action. First, they over-corrected by announcing they would no longer use syndicated cartoons. Then this week they WAY over-corrected sacking their staff cartoonists, the brilliant Patrick Chappatte and Heng Kim Song, to bring the international edition “…into line with the domestic paper by ending daily political cartoons.” (The flagship Times paper famously and inexplicably has not had a daily cartoonist for decades.)
There are much deeper weeds for me to get into here, but I don’t want to drag you all down into the specifics of my obvious self-interest. Let me just say this: When political points or job safety become more important than thoughtful discussion, we become less American (or at least the kind of American we ought to be).
John Auchter draws cartoons. Lots and lots of them. You can find them at his incredibly popular website auchtoon.com. You can also find his stuff on Michigan Public Radio’s website under Opinion.
If we can’t sometimes laugh at the politics, troubles and differences in our lives, it is a sad for us all. Sometimes that daily cartoon is the only laugh of the day in this stressful world. Yes, their cartoon was anti-Semitic, but it was also funny.
The vast majority of so called “political cartoonists” are in fact nothing more than radical, left wing idiots who approach every cartoon as an opportunity to bash President Trump/Republicans/Conservatives. It is not surprising that the free market does not want to pay for such crap. Perhaps if something of value were offered, it would sell.
Abner. You have never seen a political cartoon bashing Democrats/Liberals? Come on are you really that short sighted?
He has, but he’s only interested in making partisan points for his side.
Such people, on both sides, can be safely disregarded. You already know what they’re going to say before they do.
Back to the Michigan Social Studies debate: Right-wingers have tried to delete the word DEMOCRATIC from the curriculum, because they do not understand the difference between Democracy and the Democratic Party. These people are silly and disingenuous. We cannot let them boss us around.
If you have read just the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States you will find that the writers wrote about the nation being a REPUBLIC. Not a democratic based form of government.
The lie that the United States is a democratic based government has been a lie that has been around for a long time.
It is the liberal/socialists and some others who have been pedaling that lie.
The ones that are trying suppress free speech are those who are trying to change the government from a republican based one to a democratic based one.
If that were to happen it would go something like this: Republic to democratic to socialist to communist. With the 1% of the liberal/socialists in charge.
They would be in control.
If that was to happen goodbye to free speech. Another result would be goodbye to owning your own property. You would be told where you could live, work, shop for food etc…
It is the liberal/socialists that shut down opposing views. they are the ones who show to either harass or completely stop a speech by someone who does not share their views.