Penning a Pulitzer

He had been passed over twice before.\nPassed over twice and arguably cheated on the last occasion. \nBut the moment of truth again loomed, casting its daunting shadow. His stomach was tied in knots. \nHe just had to get out of the office, away from his colleagues, their expectant looks and good-natured well-wishing. He had finished his work for the day, a cartoon depicting two college students passing a horde of sweatshop protesters. \n"My econ prof says exploiting labor is what made America great," reads the captioned dialogue.\nSo he headed off to the local health club and went for a swim. He didn't need the stress. He took a few laps. He tried to relax, but he just couldn't get it off his mind. \nSo he dried himself off with a towel and went to the lobby, looking for a pay phone.\nAs soon as the other line picked up, he knew.\nHe knew.\nHis eyes welled up. He was afraid he would burst out in tears.\nThe cheering and champagne-fueled merriment nearly drowned out the voice on the other side.\nBloomington native Joel Pett had earned journalism's highest honor.\nA Pulitzer Prize. In Pett's case, for editorial cartooning. \nFinally. After all the near misses. The crown of glory. The loftiest form of recognition from one's peers. The proverbial first line of the obituary. The hope that lurks in the back of the mind of any bright-eyed and bushy-tailed student who's ever set foot in the J-School. But Pett didn't take that route. It just wasn't for him.\nAlthough his father was a professor at IU, he dropped out of school soon after he enrolled.\n"It was too much work," he said. "And I could never decide on a major."\nStill, Pett always had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do with his life.\nWhen he was in grade school, his father took the family to Nigeria to head up a fledgling education program. But they soon returned to Bloomington, to the cozy confines of academia. His parents wouldn't subscribe to the Indianapolis Star, deeming it too conservative. So they turned to The Courier-Journal (Louisville).\nOn many a lazy Sunday afternoon, Pett would leaf through it. And that's how he first became acquainted with Hugh Haynie, the Courier-Journal's cantankerous editorial cartoonist circa the 1960s. \n"That's when I fell in love," he said. "I thought it was so cool how he mocked Nixon, how he dogged on the Vietnam war."\nAnd so, Pett started out doodling in notebooks, trying to imitate Haynie.\n"It didn't take me long to realize I couldn't do that," he said. "Haynie had a lot of talent, and I just didn't. But then I saw the cartoons in The New Yorker. They always had something to say, some point to make. But the drawing was scribbly chickenscratch.\n"I saw that and I knew I could teach myself to do much worse."\nJoking aside, Pett doesn't put much stock in fine draftsmanship.\n"It's all about the visual gimmicks," he said. "With Nixon you just needed the unibrow and the jowls. With Reagan it was just the hair. You could put that hair on a garden-variety vegetable -- and voila, you've got a president."\nAfter he graduated from the University High School in 1971, Pett tried to find a forum for his artistic leanings in the IDS. But no such luck.\n"They run that place too much like a real newspaper," he said, excitedly spitting out a few expletives. "They had a guy doing it five days a week. That's not how it should be run. It should be open to anyone who wants to submit."\nBut after he dropped out, he had more time on his hands. He took to free-lancing, and got pieces regularly published in The Herald-Telephone, the predecessor of the Herald Times. \nBut most of the time he slacked off, playing golf and loafing about on campus.\n"I wanted to keep from having a real job for as long as possible."\nIt wasn't until 1984 that he got his break.\nHe applied for a position at the Lexington Herald-Leader, where he's been working ever since.\n"I was lucky enough to get it," he said. "A buddy helped me out. The only other applicant withdrew. That was Bill Watterson (of Calvin and Hobbes fame). He didn't yet know what he wanted to do with his life, and now he's obviously incredibly wealthy."\nKentucky hasn't always been receptive to Pett's views, which tend to the liberal side. Hate mail he's inspired regularly fills the op-ed page.\n"I spent much of my childhood in Nigeria," he said. "You tend to sympathize with the underdog when you've lived in a Third World country. People will write in all the time, calling me a communist-sympathzin', baby-killin', Second Amendment-hatin', unilateral disarmament-favorin', big government-lovin'... Guilty as charged, you know."\nPett said he plans on voting for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, the governor of Texas. And he encourages others to as well.\n"I've finally come to understand Reagan," he said. "I always voted for the good of the public interest. But now I've come to understand Reagan's 'me too' philosophy, though he was still a crummy president. So I'm voting for Bush -- it's in my self-interest. I can draw him better."\nWhile Pett likes to make a wry crack, he takes his very work seriously. Listen to him for a few minutes, and one would think cartoons on the op-ed page stand as the last bastion of democracy.\n"I offend people," he said. "I'm not paid to express opinions you agree with. I'm paid to express my own opinions. Nowadays, people are afraid of expressing their opinions. Everything is run through focus groups. It's like one long Thanksgiving dinner, where the relatives are asked not to bring up religion or politics. \n"That's not what democracy is supposed to be about -- it's supposed to be about vigorous debate."\nIn one cartoon from his Pulitzer portfolio, a CEO revels in the fact that "our foreign workers get poverty wages and endure subhuman conditions."\n"That's what makes our company great," the CEO explains. "Diversity."\nAnother cartoon just stemmed from all the articles he had seen about youth obesity. A hoggishly fat kid sets in on a meal at the kitchen table. With a look of disapproval, his mother tells him that he's got to go on a diet, so he'll be "a smaller target at school."\nThe moral outrage of occasional wittiness of Pett's work has carried him far. He's syndicated in 33 papers nationwide, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.\n"(Pett's cartoons) aren't very funny, especially compared to the work of his contemporaries," read a February Brill's Content article on the state of editorial cartooning. "They don't make you laugh out loud. If anything, they make you think. If editorial cartooning has a conscience, it's Pett."\nIn 1989, Pett was first nominated as a Pulitzer finalist in the editorial cartooning category. Ten years later, he came within a hair's breadth of winning it. \nPaul Conrad of The Los Angeles Times and the late Jeff MacNelly of the Chicago Tribune were the other finalists. Both already had three Pulitzers. The cartooning committee recommended Pett, but the board disregarded it and selected Steve Breen of the Asbury (N.J.) Park Press.\nIt came completely out of nowhere. And Breen hadn't even really established himself yet.\n"I was disappointed," Pett said. "But I wasn't bitter. Being a finalist is just as great an honor."\nWhile he's now basking in the limelight, Pett admits to being troubled by the state of the industry.\n"All these people write infotainment," he said. "Whatever happens to be in the news, whether the Subway Series or who wore what to the Academy Awards. That's just hack-work, insipid.\n"It shouldn't just be an entertainment vehicle, something that's funny."\nBut Pett's not above the occasional flight of whimsy, however much he rails against it.\n"I did this cartoon, on the presidential candidates always saying they won't go negative," he said. "So I had them saying double negatives. I later ripped off my own idea and did one where they're saying triple negatives. It's a good pun and it's funny. But it didn't have a point.\n"And you know what? It ended up in the Sunday New York Times. Even The New York Times. That's what they want now. Go figure."\nBut Pett just shrugs it all off and turns out his five cartoons a week.\n"Some people will say that coming up with an idea a day would be impossible," he said. "A single idea. I really worry about them. I mean, come on -- going an entire day without a thought. But the other half of the population thinks I've got the easiest job in the world"