Conrad’s World

Ever since its sale to Chicago-based Tribune Co. in 2000, the Los Angeles Times has suffered from a slew of firings and resignations, declining readership and decreased stock value, all of which have compromised its once solid reputation as a nationally relevant newspaper. But there was a time when the Times was a formidable rival of The New York Times and the Washington Post, most notably under the guard of Otis Chandler, who took over as publisher of the paper from his father in 1960.

At that time, the Times was a medium-size, local newspaper with Republican leanings, but the younger Chandler had plans to bring national attention and prestige to his family's livelihood. An important part of his plan to step up the Times was the hiring of controversial editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad. Since starting with the Denver Post in 1950, Conrad had earned a Pulitzer Prize and much attention as a fearlessly outspoken liberal cartoonist who unabashedly skewered politicians with his ferocious pencil strokes. Conrad agreed to join the Times on one condition: that nobody told him what to draw or how to draw it.

Conrad's move to the Times profited both parties. Once there, he continued to take on Republicans, including then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, with such a vengeance that the governor and his wife regularly phoned the Times to complain. Conrad's fierce onslaught against President Richard Nixon earned him a spot on Nixon's famed “enemies list,” much to the cartoonist's delight.

Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, once quipped, “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you've been the subject of a Paul Conrad cartoon.”

Besides his fearlessness, Conrad's other strength was his independence; he never toed a line he didn't believe in, even if it was popular with Democrats. Much to the dismay of his liberal fans, he drew a series of pointed cartoons in the 1970s condemning abortion, a practice he opposed in accordance with his Catholic faith. (He then just as forcefully changed his mind on the subject in the mid-1980s.) And he was never afraid to mock Democrats when occasion called.

In 1976, after Jimmy Carter admitted in Playboy magazine that he lusted in his heart, Conrad answered with an image of the presidential candidate mentally undressing the Statue of Liberty.

That was just in fun. Most of the time, Conrad wielded his pencil in defense of noble causes such as social justice and civil rights. His most scathing pieces excoriated poverty, racism and political unaccountability.

During his 30-year tenure as the Times staff editorial cartoonist, Conrad attracted praise and prestige just as Otis Chandler had envisioned, earning two more Pulitzer Prizes while there, but also death threats, lawsuits and condemnation from some of Washington's biggest players.

“Paul Conrad stands high among the very best editorial cartoonists,” says Sue Hodson, curator at Huntington Library, home to a vast archive of Conrad's work. “His role is to make all of us examine ourselves, our beliefs and our assumptions.”

By the mid-1980s, Chandler had scaled back his involvement in the Times, and in 1993, Conrad accepted a well-paid “invitation” to leave the paper.

“I'm part of the liberal wing that they wanted done with,” says Conrad, “I would have continued drawing there, but not under the circumstances. I didn't want to just work for ‘somebody.' There was all this talk about changing. The best paper in the nation other than The New York Times and the Washington Post, and they wanted to change it. And I kept thinking, ‘Change it to what?' But I couldn't get an answer, a logical answer. So I said, ‘Screw it.' I had a marvelous payout, so I took it and ran. But to just watch a paper dissolving, imploding … They've changed it every way they could change it that I know of.”

Since then, Conrad, now 82, has continued to draw four cartoons a week, still regularly syndicated by Tribune Media Services. Oddly enough, his work never appears in the Times, an omission that baffles his friends and fans.

“Conrad is the greatest cartoonist of our time,” says Bryce Nelson, who worked at the Times as national correspondent and Midwest bureau chief from 1969 to 1982. “The Times is making a huge mistake in not running more of his cartoons; they've never had another cartoonist that can begin to equal him.”

“I think they're trying to forget me,” suggests Conrad, “and they're succeeding. I don't care. It was time for somebody else.”

That somebody else was Conrad's successor, conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez, who remained with the Times until being let go last year in then-Publisher Jeff Johnson's dramatic shake-up of the Op-Ed pages. “Best move they ever made,” Conrad says. “It was just tragic to be followed by that guy. He was one hell of a good artist and a good illustrator, but he wasn't a cartoonist, which was too bad. But that's the way it turned out, and they were stuck. He doesn't understand politics. … They were marvelous drawings, but they didn't say anything and he had very little humor.”

The distinction between cartoonist and illustrator, according to Conrad, boils down to “saying something.” Puffing on a pipe at his home in Rancho Palos Verdes where he lives with his wife Kay, whom he met in 1950 while they were both working at the Denver Post, Conrad gestures sadly at the empty drawings that now grace the pages of the Times, which he still reads faithfully every day.            

“The problem with the LA Times is that all of the first-rate talent quit when they sold the paper to Tribune Co. It's a shame because a paper being published in LA shouldn't be edited or whatever in Chicago. That's just silly. I hope they get it settled, although I don't know how they're going to. A newspaper's a funny thing; it's a very personal thing to each and every reader. It's necessary that they get talent in that knows their way around town. They can't get a lot of these guys back, so now they'll have to make do with what they've got. It's sad, it really is.”

These sentiments are echoed in one of Conrad's most recent cartoons. Underneath the Times eagle symbol is written “Los Angeles Times” crossed out and replaced by the words “Chicago Tribune.”

But even while his former employer struggles to regain its footing as a national newspaper, Conrad is enjoying a career renaissance. “Drawing Fire,” a one-hour documentary tribute to Conrad, aired earlier this month on PBS, and he has just published his autobiography “I, Con,” with LA-based Angel City Press. The book collects some of Conrad's best work over the last 50 years, accompanied by a smattering of text about his childhood, his years at the Times and the changing political landscape.

Besides the autobiographical text, what distinguishes this book from Conrad's previous six is the generous helping of recent cartoons. Obviously, Conrad is aggrieved by the current administration, and his cartoons since George W. Bush has entered office are some of his most incisive, including numerous pieces on poverty, the Iraq war, the Israel-Palestine conflict, corporate and political corruption, environmentalism and gun control.

Conrad has even gone so far as to say that Bush is surpassing Nixon as the worst US president of all time.

It's a unique trait of Conrad's to be eerily prescient about these things. Early in Bush's reign, Conrad published a cartoon that showed the president in the process of sawing off two branches of a tree labeled “Judicial” and “Legislative,” leaving the trunk of the tree — labeled “Executive” — untouched. Earlier this month, an echo of that cartoon appeared again. This time, the “Judicial” and “Legislative” branches lie on the floor, fully severed. Only a towering trunk labeled “Administrative” remains.

“It's absolutely sinful what this guy did with these write-offs,” says Conrad of Bush. “Congress would pass laws and he'd OK them, but then he'd say, ‘Well, they don't apply to me.' Talk about a self-indulgent bastard. Congress is going to have to go back through and review what he's done. I mean, this guy was out for king; he had the wrong country.”

Still, Conrad is a true patriot. He unequivocally ends “I, Con” on an optimistic note, in defiance of the pessimistic dismay that has overtaken some of his fellow Democrats.

“We have a country that is enviable because we, as a democracy,” writes Conrad, “are the makers of our own destiny, the destiny of our children, and for many more generations to come.”