The Denver Catholic Register WEDNESDAY JUNE 20, 1979 VOL
The Denver Catholic Register WEDNESDAY JUNE 20, 1979 VOL. LIV NO. 36 Colorado’s Largest Weekly 32 PAGES 25 CENTS PER COPY Conrad, an Editorial Cartoonist Whose Pen Has a Tongue of Fire By Thomas M. Jenkins Assaulting complacency, ridiculing corruption and lambasting the pretentions, malfeasances and idiotic decisions of modern bureaucratic government as well as the personal and spiritual plight of the American citizen, Paul Conrad is a cartoonist who dares to be controversial and take an unequivocal stand. In the process, his six cartoons a week for the Los Angeles Times have been raising blood pressures for the past 16 years. After two Pulitzer Prizes and two published books, his caustic im agery continues to be syndicated in 150 newspapers. Conrad, who was with the Denver Post for 13 years as an editorial cartoonist, has justly earned his place in the procession of the illustrious cartoonist pens of Daumier, Nast, Levine, MacNelly, Mauldin, Herblock, Wright and Oliphant. He maintains the gutsy tradition of those satirists whose ridicule contains the truth necessary to puncture the bubbles of inept leadership, overuse of power, the inability to act, the mistreatment of the disadvantaged, elderly and ignorant, the prolongation of war and the continuation of a destructive monetary policy. If he seems cruel to the politician, it is only to be kind to the Republic. Religious Conviction Unique in presentation is Conrad’s religious conviction. Under no constraining directives from the Los Angeles Times, Conrad is always forthright and sometimes brutal in confronting the spiritual issues of the day. In that process, he disturbs (and even angers) many of his readers as he forces them to look at themselves and their patterns of living.
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