Issue date: 10/23/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Rachel Stone Joel Pett (center right in black) chats with Chautauqua organizer Dr. Bruce MacLaren(front left in white) and others at a dinner before the Chautauqua lecture Thursday night.

Equipped with an oversized Sharpie and a few sheets of blank paper, Joel Pett could launch a hefty hullabaloo that could make a preacher curse.

With just a few jolting flicks of his wrist and a vocabulary drenched in sarcasm, Joel Pett, an editorial cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, stirred political waters Thursday night at his lecture in Eastern's Chautauqua series.

"I get paid to say my own opinions," Pett said. "If you don't like my opinions, that doesn't make us enemies."

The lecture took place in O'Donnell Auditorium of the Student Services Building. The crowd instantly reacted to Pett's blunt wordiness, usually with gasps and hearty laughter.

Pett, who freelanced before joining the Lexington Herald-Leader in 1984, is also a contributing cartoonist for USA Today, a Pulitzer Prize winner for cartooning (2000), winner of the John F. Kennedy Journalism award in 1999 and former president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

Bruce MacLaren, the Chautauqua series coordinator, listed Pett's achievements in the introduction. Pett didn't seem to take himself too seriously.

"What a load of crap," he said. "Thank you."

Pett said it wasn't until after he realized that people won awards for polka albums that he decided winning a Pulitzer wasn't such a big fiasco.

Pett started his lecture by asking audience members who were planning on leaving early to move to the back of the auditorium. He said it hurt his feelings when he saw people get up and leave.

"I take it personally," Pett said. "And try to contact you later."

At the outset, Pett spoke about this year's Chautauqua theme: freedom, a force against ignorance and tyranny.

"I'm in favor of tyranny," Pett said. "[We should] tyrannize the ignorant."

Pett said ignorant people reproduce like mad. The children of ignorant people should be put up for adoption by the parents, he said, and then be sterilized immediately.

Continued...

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