The Idea
So since I just took on the biggest (albeit easiest) figure possible in two of the biggest possible contexts. I felt I had a handle on the issues and the personnel and my instincts were sharpening.
The next headline that caught my eye was, “FedEx asks the Washington Redskins to change their name”. I knew this had come up before, but team owner Dan Snyder had rebuffed it every time. THIS time I thought it would stick.
I mean, it wasn’t Nostradomus, but it was an insight and I took it as a win. So I got to work:
After years of refusals, the Washington NFL team relented to pressure and decided to change its name.
That story broke on July 3rd. This piece was done on July 8th. I immediately got it to my rep, John, to shop it around to media outlets. The team announced on the 13th that they would, indeed, be changing their name. So I was out in front of this one, with a valid illustration, ready to go.
No takers, but I still felt like I was on to something. And it felt good, honestly, to be sounding nothing but my voice into these images. It felt really. damn. good.
Next up was the pardons.
Backing up just a little, on May 7th, the Justice Department announced that it was dropping its case against Gen. (Ret.) Michael Flynn, Trump’s former National Security Advisor, for lying to the FBI, despite multiple guilty pleas and despite the fact that Flynn had been receiving sentencing delays for over a year.
So this was before my pivot on June 1st. But I kept hearing chatter about Roger Stone and a potential pardon. I knew I wanted to do a piece portraying Attorney General William Barr as Trump’s new fixer, focusing on the Flynn matter but also making a number of predictions and references to past misdeeds.
How many references can you find?
This piece was completed on July 10th, the same day President Trump said that he would “look at” a pardon for Stone (at the top of the Thumb’s Up list on the fridge). He commuted Stone’s prison sentence the next day. Stone had been convicted by a jury of lying to Congress and witness tampering in connection to the investigations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
I had called another one (kinda), and it was ready to go. There would be fresh outrage at Barr and his role in the administration. Articles would be written. But though I showed it to John, I asked him not to circulate it.
I was thinking of something else.
