By Joel Pett. Used with permission.
Joel Pett has been a cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1984 and USA Today since 2002. Among his many awards are the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and the 1999 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. But one of his favorite honors is the garage in Canada that sports a mural of the cartoon above. “Somehow it seems like the highest compliment I’ve ever received.”
Joel drew the cartoon for USA Today just prior to the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference. In a March 18, 2012 Op Ed, he wrote, “I’ve drawn slightly upwards of 7,000 editorial cartoons in my career. Most of them have a one-day shelf life . . .Not a week has gone by in the 27 months since its publication that I haven’t had a request for some kind of re-use.” We asked him if the requests are still coming. He said, “Yes they are….it’s remarkable.” You can read more about Joel at the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. You can follow him on Facebook here.
