Longtime Tribune cartoonist will continue to create local offerings, while taking time to travel
(Rick Egan | For The Salt Lake Tribune) Pat Bagley is pictured in The Tribune’s newsroom years ago.
Some people pronounce it PEW-let-sur. Some say PULL-it-sir.
In Pat Bagley’s house, as in mine, we say “Missed it by that much.”
Pat was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. The jury noted “his adroit use of images and words that cut to the core of often emotional issues for his readership.”
Note the wording “for his readership.” Pat’s readership, his home, his inspiration, is Utah. And his cartoons have, since the beginning, spoken to Utahns as few others could.
It’s also been a factor in why he hasn’t — yet — won the Pulitzer. The jury members aren’t from Utah.
Not all his cartoons are inside jokes. They are distributed worldwide through the Cagle syndicate, and have often appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and other publications.
Pat did win the Herblock Prize for political cartooning in 2009. Less famous than the Pulitzer, perhaps, but arguably more prestigious, as the panel of judges included legendary cartoonists Garry Trudeau and Jules Feiffer.
Not bad for a guy who, as an artist and a commentator, is mostly self-taught. He has a degree in political science from Brigham Young University, with a minor in history.
His cartooning career began as a doodle drawn while, one assumes, he was not paying attention in a finance class. It became the first of several drawings published in the BYU Daily Universe newspaper, mostly poking fun at BYU and LDS culture, which he knew intimately.
After a brief spell working as a caricaturist in the Orem Mall — what better use of a political science degree? — he wangled a job as a staff cartoonist for The Salt Lake Tribune. His focus for quite some time continued to be a mostly gentle ribbing of Utah and LDS culture.
The arc of Pat’s career says a lot about our history over the past 45 years. Back then, the cultural conservatism of Utah was something to make fun of, in a neighborly way. Holding up a mirror might be enough to get people to rethink their prejudices and habits. If you do it gently enough, maybe you can get some folks to rethink and even slightly change some of their most old-fashioned and outdated policies.
More recently, stuff has gotten real.
After the election of 2000, when George W. Bush became president — and after 2003, when Bush made the decision to invade Iraq — Pat was, by his own description, “radicalized.” From then on, many of Pat’s scribbles were less teasing, more pointed.
Those history classes at BYU came in handy, as he has deftly noted frightening parallels between current events and the rise of the Nazis in Germany, the McCarthy era and violent opposition to the Civil Rights Movement.
In 2009 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was crusading against marriage equality, couching their hostility as expressions of religious freedom that should not be challenged. That’s when Pat softly let it be known that he had “retired” from the LDS Church. More in sorrow than in anger, and that he considered his time in the church, which included a two-year mission to Bolivia, as “a good experience” that would forever be “in my blood.”
As a writer, I am jealous of Pat’s ability to use his pen — or, now, his iPad stylus — to instantly make a point in a way that flows right into the minds of his readers before they have a chance to raise their shields. In order to get the gist of one of my editorials or columns, a reader has to be convinced to wade through 400 to 900 words.
Often we do well to pair one of my editorials with one of his cartoons. If you don’t know enough detail or background to get the cartoon, you can read the editorial. If you don’t want to take the time to read the editorial, you can look at the cartoon.
Pat kindly helped this Kansas boy find his way around Utah culture, history and politics when I drifted into town 23 years ago. He threw some of the best New Year’s Eve parties, stirred up a mean chili and displayed good taste in the whiskey with which we’d toast the end of an interminable week.
Now Pat and I are both dialing it back a bit, transitioning into a partial retirement, claiming our Social Security and Medicare benefits while we still can, doing less work for The Tribune and taking the time to see more of the world.
But we’ll always have Utah.
Cheers.
George Pyle, reading The New York Times at The Rose Establishment.
George Pyle, opinion editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing waaay back in 1998.
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