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Random Thots is brought to you by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist at the Hamilton Spectator, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Website: mackaycartoons.net.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Winston Churchill
I'm such a nerd. It seems I'm the only one in the editorial department who can compare the rowdy Flambrarians enraged over a recent hike in property taxes to a famous cartoon drawn in the lead up to the American Revolution:
Nobody seemed to know about the cartoon I was talking about, even though I've seen it replicated all over the place, in t-shirts, wood carvings and tacky tapestries - the kind you see being hawked at U.S. state fairs. A really great HBO miniseries on the life of John Adams just wrapped up opened each segment with panning closeups of this cartoon accompanied by stirring drumbeat. The above cartoon is based on one which appeared in Ben Franklin's newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754, according to Early America.com. It appeared as part of an editorial by Franklin commenting on 'the present disunited state of the British Colonies.'
The woodcut drawing entitled 'Join or Die' pictures a divided snake in eight pieces representing as many colonial governments. The drawing was based on the popular superstition that a snake that had been cut in two would come to life if the pieces were joined before sunset. The drawing immediately caught the public's fancy and was reproduced in other newspapers.
In my strange view of the world it made for a natural application to the situation in Flamborough. It follows a gathering of a thousand or so angry citizens who packed a hockey arena to vent about the City's decision to take the revenues of a Flamborough casino. It didn't run. It appears as though the Join or Die part might only make matters worse. If people around this aren't going to know what I'm talking about then it's hardly going to prevent the Flam-bumpkis from wondering out loud.
Hamilton's problem? Maybe The Spectator should look in the mirror.
On May 1, a Hamilton Economic Summit was held with the purported intent of kick-starting the revitalization of Hamilton. Speaker after speaker, including outside experts and local leaders, advocated a new spirit of creativity and positive thinking. The Spectator's headline said Hamilton is "poised for global greatness".
Urban studies expert Richard Florida, however, noted that while all the basics are theoretically in place for Hamilton, the factor that might stand in the way would be local "squelchers". Richard may not be a local, but he seems to know Hamilton.
I moved to Hamilton because I was excited by the opportunity to rejuvenate and redevelop historic downtown buildings. I attended this conference, and felt encouraged. The next morning, the day on which we were all supposed to go forth and be positive, I opened The Spectator and find a snarky editorial cartoon portraying me as an evil snake oil salesman.
Whether it is ironic or just puts the reality into focus, the Spectator was a sponsor of the summit. May I suggest that the emperor has no clothes.
Since moving here, my family and I have generally been impressed with the spirit and warmth of the people of Hamilton. The one sour note has been the mean-spirited, superficial personal ridiculing of the Spectator's editorial cartoons. Notwithstanding, I remain committed to restoring the Connaught and creating other buildings that will enhance the city.
Harry Stinson, Hamilton
Suck it up, Harry Stinson, you're supposedly one of us now.
Most Hamiltonians know that if they throw their name around and attract the glare of the spotlight they run a good chance of being subjected to the ridicule of local "squelchers". It's a common occurance in most cities, unless you're in a town like Havana, Beijing, or Harare. Fortunately, in this part of the world, freedom of the press allows expression in the form of editorial cartoons. Some examples where my work has received the praise of locals being poked at include the people in this cartoon, this cartoon, and in this cartoon.
In Harry Stinson's mind, The Spectator, having been a sponsor of the Hamilton Economic Summit, should've spiked a cartoon because it happened to make fun of an inflated developer who has so far been a lot of talk throwing a little money around. This doesn't sound out of the ordinary if you buy the into the myth that corporate interests of a newspaper dictates editorial policies.
If a couple editorial cartoons are enough to motivate a recently arrived developer into writing a letter to the editor to convey hurt feelings just wait until confronted by the legions of activists who'll roadblock every move to stick a dreamy 50-80-100 (or whatever storied) skyscraper behind the grand old Royal Connaught. Just wait for the wild criticism to be unleashed once the promise of a beautiful photoshopped downtown megadevelopment tickles our imagination only to be dashed once huge demands for public money are required to get things going. We've been down this road many times.
Harry Stinson has proven to be successful in building and restoring several handsome properties in downtown Toronto. It sure would be nice to witness his optimistic sounding visions and ideas translate into real action -- but this is Hamilton, not Toronto. Here, development faces much more caution and public scrutiny. It's a frustrating and exhaustive reality which has led many desperately longing for the coming of some messiah figure to solve our problems. The sycophantic antics of a few putting all their eggs into the Stinson basket makes me worry. Pardon my skepticism, but somebody has come to town talking about building a 90 story skyscraper and looking for occupancy by 2010. Some call that ambition - I call it pure fantasy. Now there's news of some property purchasing on the central mountain brow. Is this guy serious? Or, is this all about blowin' smoke? Yeah, it's obvious what I think about him, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Some feedback about this cartoon posted on a local blog:
I actually saw that cartoon and almost called the Spectator. I get angry sometimes when I talk about the Core and where it can go and all I hear is "that's not going to happen" or "we can't afford that". Who says? I guess if there was less for the squelchers to complain about, they'd have to find something else to whine about since it's usually the people who put down Hamilton's core who squelch any plans for ambitious development as well.
* * * * *
The Spectator is disgusting in its willingness to lionize people one day and vilify them the next. I think Stinson should be given a chance to see what he can produce.
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Anyone been to Toronto lately and seen the construction towers? There's been a boom going on that Hamilton has largely missed out on... and the boom appears to be slowing. We should be welcoming people who see opportunity... They will lead the way before opportunity is lost.
My boss declared with amazement this morning that a whole day went by and he didn't hear one single complaint about yesterday's cartoon as shown above. It's the same boss who, early in his role as the Spec's editorial page balked at running a relatively tame cartoon I drew around the death of Pope John Paul II. The incident of its spiking even got the attention of the author David Wallis, who included it in his 2006 book entitled "Killed Cartoons".
Anyway, a colleague here suggested the reason I'm not getting feedback on the red shoe cartoon is because most of the area's defensive Roman Catholics are in the midst of their pilgrimages to Washington D.C. and New York City. However, it seems the newspapers I syndicate are taking a pass on running.
I just received one letter of outrage:
As much as I am a fan of Graeme MacKay's political cartoons I do feel that this one is pushing the boundaries as far as is possible without inciting riots à la Danish cartoons negatively portraying Mohammad.
I am certainly no George W. Bush sympathizer but depicting him as the devil does seem to be pushing those aforementioned boundaries. Furthermore, the cartoon also paints the Prada-wearing Pope in a negative light. As the cartoon certainly seems to be a reference to the hit movie The Devil Wears Prada, are we to assume MacKay sees both men as instruments of darkness? As a Catholic, this cartoon deeply offends me and I hope in the future MacKay thinks twice before attacking the spiritual leader of one billion people.
A letter in today's Spec made the brutally obvious comment after the story that Trevor Garwood-Jones' architecture firm may oversee the resign of Hamilton's City Hall:
Re: 'Garwood-Jones eyes City Hall rebuild' (Column, April 9)
I am a relative newcomer to Hamilton (five years), but I have lived in several Canadian cities. I was appalled to read that the city is trying to secure the services of the architect who designed Hamilton Place, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Hamilton Convention Centre. I find all three buildings remarkably unattractive, particularly from the outside.
To people walking along King Street, the convention centre with its plain, dismal brick wall looks more like a prison than a place you would want to visit, and finding the entrance is not only difficult but unpleasant.
It involves walking through a dark, poorly lit tunnel along a sidewalk littered with cigarette butts and other garbage. The art gallery suffered from the same forbidding exterior until it was enlivened a few years ago at no small cost.
Looking around downtown Hamilton, it would seem that a huge number of mistakes have been made over the past few years.
Let's not compound them by bringing back Trevor Garwood-Jones to oversee the design of yet another brick fortress.
We need new vision and new ideas if this city is to move forward and prosper -- not the same old, same old.
Anne Ingram, Hamilton
Ouch!
Garwood-Jones, the distinguished architect-emeritus of our generation has been slagged, big time. As I was saying to a workmate the other day he is one of a few well known personalites you don't dare make fun of, unless they're being roasted before a banquet hall audience of other civic untouchables chomping down on their $200 to $500/plate dinners. It's easy to list them off, usually they're charitable captains of industries, high profile artists, media personalities, big public service administrators and the odd orchestra conductor, University President, or former Lieutenant-Governor. Whenever I've poked fun at any of them in my cartoons I've often made my bosses very nervous, enough so that they've spiked a few from being printed in the past.
To be fair to Garwood-Jones not all of the buildings he has worked on are dismal concrete or brick fortresses from the exterior. He has renovated many buildings in the last 2 decades which aren't exactly inspired from the concrete years of the 1970's. The downtown GO Station is a prime example.
What's unfortunate for Garwood-Jones was that he emerged on the scene in a big way in the 70's when trends in architecture were all about brutal facades of poured concrete and sharp angles. Not much thought was made towards how people might feel working or learning in big boxes with hardly any windows and where doors were located in places you'd least expect.
I work in a building constructed in 1975 in the heyday of the brick bunker movement of architecture. I draw my cartoons in the corner of a room on the third floor facing 2 cinder block walls painted a grey-purple colour, and the only view anyone in the newsroom has of the outside world is a little window tucked into the northweast corner of the room. The same architect, Arthur Taylor, built another windowless brick building known as Sir John A. MacDonald High School, and funny enough, the Barton Street Jail.
Other big buildings that went up in Hamilton's seventies boom years can be seen west of James street South in an area concentrated with cement highrise apartment buildings reminicient of a city scene from any big banana republic city. The hideous reminders of the concrete era of architecture are here to stay unfortunately. Garwood-Jones isn't entirely the one to blame but he didn't help the situation with some of the monsters he created.
This political cartoon is, perhaps unintentionally, an appropriate tribute to the wisdom of the German people. Perhaps no others on the planet have acquired, through bitter experience, a better understanding of the evil of militarism. The fact that we are badgering them to forget the lessons of the past indicates just how low we have sunk.
For a brief time in our history, when we actually acted like a sovereign nation, we understood that it was important to keep peace, not make war. Unfortunately that era has passed.
As members of that club of Dr. Strangeloves that NATO has now become, we are doomed to be forever killing because after all, we know best.
