Conrad draws crowd at UCLA

  MANDY WHITING Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning
cartoonist Paul Conrad speaks at the UCLA School
of Public Policy on Thursday.

By Emily Taylor-Mortorff
Daily Bruin Contributor

Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Los Angeles Times editorial
cartoonist Paul Conrad brought laughter to the UCLA School of
Public Policy on Thursday.

Full of lawyer and politician jokes, Conrad left nothing
off-limits ““ his commentary spanned from Richard Nixon to
George W. Bush, and everything he’s seen in his 50-year
career.

“There is always room to point out a problem,” he
said.

Conrad was chief editorial cartoonist of the Los Angeles Times
from 1964-93. He has won several awards, including three Pulitzers
(1964, 1971 and 1984) and six Distinguished Service Awards for
Editorial Cartooning from the Society of Professional
Journalists/Sigma Delta Chi, making him the only journalist to win
that many SDX awards in any category since the annual competition
began in 1932.

Conrad said he cannot describe how he is able to turn words and
sentiments into cartoons.

“Luckily, for 50 years it has worked for me,” he
said.

Conrad, a senior fellow at the School of Public Policy, said his
favorite distinction was when his name appeared in Richard
Nixon’s Enemies List in 1973. His favorite irony: holding the
Richard M. Nixon Chair at Whittier College in California from
1977-78.

In the introduction to Conrad’s book
“CONartist,” former Los Angeles Times editor and
executive president Shelby Coffey III wrote that Conrad
“afflicted the comfortable and comforted the
afflicted.”

His last book, he said, was put together in part to lend
exposure to five cartoons the Los Angeles Times would not
print.

“(Conrad’s) work is able to communicate so much more
than just reading a book,” said Limor Bar-Cohen, a
second-year graduate student in public policy. “You’re
gonna have a reaction, whether positive or negative.”

During Thursday’s visit, Conrad showed a cartoon image of
a man in uniform. The caption read, “Those who cast their
votes decide nothing. Those who count their votes, decide
everything.” The cartoon had been Conrad’s tribute to
the ballot counting fiasco in Florida during the 2000 presidential
election.

Conrad’s other books include “Drawn and
Quartered,” “Pro and Conrad,” “The King and
Us” and “When in the Course of Human Events with
Malcolm Boyd.”

Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1924, Conrad first made his mark
on the bathroom walls of St. Augustine’s School in Des
Moines.

Conrad started professionally cartooning at the University of
Iowa for the Daily Iowan. He spent 14 years at the Denver Post
before joining the Los Angeles Times. He and his wife, Kay King,
have two sons and two daughters.

Conrad is now syndicated by the Los Angeles Times and works out
of the South Bay bureau. He draws two cartoons on Monday and two on
Tuesday.

As he glanced through Wednesday’s issue of the New York
Times, he said to the audience that his cartoon on Monday will be
about the decrease in monetary damages required from Exxon oil
company for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

When asked which of his cartoons was his favorite, he said:
“The one I’m gonna do on Monday. And I have absolutely
no idea what it’s gonna be.”