Paul Conrad, 1924–2010

The cartoonist who unnerved politicians

“Don’t ever accuse me of being objective,” Paul Conrad liked to say. As the editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times from 1964 until 1991, Conrad delighted in skewering the powerful. During the 1960s, Conrad savaged then–Gov. Ronald Reagan so frequently that Times publisher Otis Chandler quipped that his mornings began with a phone call from the governor or his wife expressing outrage over Conrad’s latest drawing.

Conrad was an unabashed liberal, but he happily “took aim at pomposity, injustice, and corruption” of all ideological stripes, said The Washington Post. One of his most memorable cartoons appeared shortly after Sen. Edward Kennedy’s scandalous car accident in Chappaquiddick, Mass., which left a young woman dead. Conrad drew Lady Justice, with her blindfold and balancing scales, refusing a ride offered by Kennedy. But Conrad reserved his most scathing attacks for Republicans, especially Richard Nixon. When Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, Conrad drew a helicopter lifting off from the White House lawn, with the caption: “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”

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