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Before he was a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten was an editor in the Opinion section and got to know Paul Conrad well. His tribute to the political cartoonist is one of the best I've come across. Excerpt:
He never lost his sense of outrage.My friend Paul Conrad, who died Saturday at 86, was the premier editorial cartoonist of his generation and, for many years, this newspaper's most visible public face. Outrage informed his journalism and animated his art. He woke up each morning angry about some new injustice and allowed sleep to overtake him each night only so that he could get up mad the next day and do it all again.
He was always and everywhere on the side of decency and ordinary men and women. His targets were the self-satisfied powerful, those indifferent to or antagonistic to our common good, and they included presidents...as well as governors, mayors, popes and corporate executives.
The cartoon above is from John Sherffius of the Boulder Daily Camera and Creators News Service. "My editorial cartooning hero," he writes of Conrad. Conrad obituaries of note: James Rainey in the LAT, Robert D. McFadden in the NYT, Mr. Fish at Truthdig.
Previously on LA Observed:
Paul Conrad, political cartoonist was 86