The following is an original production of WTCI.

Clay Bennett is not the kind of man who goes along to get along.

So yeah, usually the cartoonists that are the most entertaining, for lack of a better word, are the ones kind of on the extremes because they do sort of hang it all out there.

It's just about the debate.

I mean, this is just my opinion.

I'm no smarter than anybody else.

I just draw.

Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett gets expressive on this episode of the A-list.

Clay Bennett searches for the truth every day in the pages of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Whether it's commentary on city politics or a witty jab at U.S. foreign policy, this Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist calls it as he sees it that Bennett's passion for art and humor started at a very young age.

He was born in Clinton South Carolina, in 1958, and his father's career in the Army meant they never stayed put for very long.

So you're a kid and art is just natural to you.

You always had a penchant for drawing.

Yeah, I always drew.

My mom always relates the story about how she used to keep me quiet in church was to give me the church bulletin and I would start scribbling.

But that soon ended up to be the margins of the hymnals.

And, you know, so it was it was ended up being a bit of vandalism mixed with creativity.

But but yeah, I was I always wanted to be a cartoonist since I was about four or five years old.

And it took different forms over the years.

You know, when I was into comic books as a kid, I wanted to be like a marvel comic book cartoonist, or when I was reading comic strips in the newspaper, I wanted to do peanuts like strip or something like that.

So I sort of moved from one discipline to another.

And then when I became politicized in my early teens, I decided that editorial cartooning was the route I wanted to go, and I never looked back.

How important were your family dynamics to the decision to become an editorial cartoonist?

They were huge.

You know, my my family is a big influence on me in almost every way.

But like, you know, I grew up you know, it wasn't it was more like The McLaughlin Group than it was like a real family.

And every night at dinner was just this, you know, rancorous debate.

It was the sixties.

You have to understand a lot was going on.

An antiwar movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement was all on the nightly news.

And my father, who was a lifer in the Army, Gold Goldwater Republican at the time, he, you know, held court at dinner.

And my two sisters, both older than me, were very liberal, you know, sixties hippies.

I always referred to them as.

And so there was always this, you know, just huge debate.

And my father was really razor sharp.

He could really put forth a pretty good debate.

You know, all these facts.

And, you know, it could support his argument.

My sisters really couldn't.

But I sat there watching it, and I really sided with my sisters more philosophically and substantially.

But, boy, I really did like the way my dad couched the debate.

And he would usually win on style points.

But, you know, they were right.

He was wrong about everything, but he was really good at expressing how wrong he was.

I read that you appreciated your father using his head, but could really empathize with your sisters using their heart.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

My sister, Lisa used to always, you know, rush from the table in tears because my father would, you know, rebuke her in some profound way and years later, she was talking to him and said, Gee, Dad, you must have great conversations with with Clay.

He's very political.

This was when I'd grown up and he says, Yeah, but now it's me who leaves the table in tears.

So that's not a bad compliment from an old army man.

So do you remember that turning point, though, when it went from wanting to be kind of the Charles Schulz of the cartooning world to really something that was more taking a stance on issues, you know, the politically driven cartoonists in the teens.

And for a teenager, to me that takes a lot of self-confidence to want to to, you know, vocalize your opinions in a way that can really, really kind of cause a little disruption.

Yeah, I suppose I was always a bit of a troublemaker.

And in the fifth grade, we had a substitute teacher in my class, Mrs. Bailey.

I remember her to this day.

And on this particular day it was raining outside so we couldn't go outside for recess.

So they left us in the class to play, as they often would on rainy days.

And so Mrs. Bailey left.

And, you know, I drew this big drawing of Mrs. Bailey on the blackboard, and it wasn't flattering.

It was a profound political philosophy or a striking caricature in any way.

It was pretty juvenile, but I got into a lot of trouble and I sent to the principal's office, which wasn't, you know, a rare event.

But this was the first time I was sent there because of a drawing.

And I found out a day later that although I was in trouble with the principal and my substitute teacher and the powers that be, all the kids in the schoolyard had heard about it and really, you know, respected it.

It was it was automatic, you know, creds on the playground for me.

And so I saw exactly how a cartoon could tweak it power and almost comfort the afflicted at the same time.

And that appealed to me a lot.

Now, it wasn't for probably two or three more years that I would decide to pursue this as a career at the ripe old age of 14.

But I think it was just because I was always opinionated.

I I've been a cartoonist as long as I can remember, and I've been opinionated as long as anybody else can remember.

So, you know, it seemed like a perfect blend of my talent at art and obnoxiousness.

You know.

That was college always in your future?

Was that always a must, even though, you know, your talents were somewhat innate and already presenting themselves at such an early age?

No, I, I never considered anything but college that was just in the plan.

And, you know, I'd worked at my high school newspaper and got fired from my high school newspaper.

And then, you know, I went to college and and really set my curriculum there to to fit a career in editorial cartooning.

You know what I majored in in art and minored in history and worked for the school paper there.

Got fired at the school paper there, started my own newspaper in college.

And then after about six months, I just fired myself.

You know, it seemed like the pattern had developed.

And so I thought I'd go with that.

No, I really didn't fire myself.

But but I did have a lot of fun publishing, you know, sort of this underground newspaper in college.

What was it called.

By the Biased news?

The subhead was Biased News for a biased community and it was completely farcical, you know, sort of the The Onion before the onion, it would take kernels of truth.

It would take stories that were really true, but then it would just lampoon them beyond recognition.

And it had everybody in Florence, Alabama, all upset.

It was great.

Now, were you always a news junkie, too?

Yeah, I guess so.

You know, now, obviously, over my entire adult life, I have been.

But, you know, it went back to high school.

I mean, that was the thing back in the olden days.

Back in the olden days where people actually read news on, you know, this sort of, you know, dull newsprint paper every day.

Everybody had a newspaper in their house.

So whether I wanted to be or not, there was this thing laying around the house.

So if I was eating a bowl of cereal or, you know, just sort of wasting time, it was always there to pick up.

And I, I wish that was the case today.

I wish more people would have newspapers in their houses, because I think that's what sort of got me as a very young person interested in in reading the news of something that you don't have to plug in the newspaper.

That window to the world that so captivated Clay as a young man was also the medium where his passion for art and politics finally came together.

But that's not to say success came easily to a young man just out of school.

Let's talk about your first job out of college.

Okay?

How'd you get it?

I was in my last year of college.

I was living in a $55 a month apartment over a poodle parlor where they cut poodle hair and pets of all kind.

I guess all day long it was yap, yap, yap, yap, yap underneath me.

And so I sat there, you know, the whole year typing on a manual typewriter.

You know, these these resumes, cover letters, resumes and send them out to 350 newspaper across the country.

You know, I'm a cartoonist, you know, hire me.

I think I got five responses and one of them was from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

And they didn't want me to be a cartoonist.

They wanted me to draw maps and charts.

So that's what I did.

For the first six months of my career.

I went and worked in Pittsburgh and I drew maps and charts.

It was scintillating.

It's but it was a union job.

So I started off at a pretty good scale.

And from there, six months after that, I got hired for a job in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where I drew cartoons and maps and charts.

So I was the entire art department of the newspaper, plus its editorial cartoonist.

And I did one more cartoon a week then than I did now than I do now.

So it was a workload.

Like it was a crazy workload.

Wicked crazy.

So so I worked at that job for six months.

And so then I'm sitting a year out of college.

I had been a cartoonist sort of, you know, sort of a slot cartoonist slash staff artist.

And I got hired at the biggest job opening available at the time, Saint Petersburg Times in St Petersburg, Florida.

Huge paper, great reputation, super liberal.

And I was 23 years old.

What were they thinking?

I mean, that's crazy to give that kind of space to such a youngster.

But I was certainly glad they did.

Yeah, it was a great day.

Do you remember the first cartoon that was printed in that paper.

This terrible.

I'm sure it was terrible.

I don't know.

I drew up some cartoons sort of in anticipation of starting because I was sure I was going to just see that when I got there.

And I was so nervous.

I was so nervous starting that job because, you know, whenever you're sort of an aspiring cartoonist, you can always use the excuse that you're not making it because you're not given the chance to make it right.

But I was given the chance.

I was given a great chance.

If I blew it now, it was it was all my fault because I didn't have any more excuses left.

And and so so that was kind of terrifying that it took away one of my best excuses.

And so if I was a failure, I was a failure all on my own.

And so I drew up some cartoons ahead of time.

They were terrible cartoons.

The first five years I work there, all my cartoons were terrible.

I was 23 years old.

I mean, out of Mark and you.

B But they saw something there and stuck with me for a good long while.

The man who hired me there was just a wonderful man, and I couldn't have been luckier to have Robert Pittman as my first editor.

He was he was truly a great journalist.

I, I still think that.

So if Robert Pittman was your best boss, I would assume that his successor might have been your worst.

It was terrible.

You know, this this terrific man who had built this great editorial page over a lifetime was replaced by this guy who had never been sort of on editorial side.

He'd been a newsman, but not running an editorial page.

And that was painfully obvious very quickly.

And and he you know, we just didn't get along.

He didn't like my politics particularly.

He didn't like me particularly.

And I guess after a couple of years, he had about as much as he wanted to take of me and showed me the door.

And the odd thing about being fired was, of course, it was devastating.

At first I thought it was I thought that they had stolen something from me.

They had stolen my identity.

I was no longer a cartoonist, but but then I figured out, you know, I was a cartoonist when I was six and, you know, so so I've always been a cartoonist.

It doesn't depend on how much money you're making.

So I got over that.

And then the reaction at the paper was very, very gratifying to me.

I mean, you had 120 people on the staff of the AP Times, you know, petitioned the publisher about my firing.

You know, cartoonists from across the country wrote letters of complaint.

Nine Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonists signed on to one letter complaining about.

So in a weird way, in the first 13 years of my career, the most validating event was being fired.

I mean, that's pathetic, really, if you think about it.

But but it was I mean, all of a sudden I thought, wow, maybe I'm in the right profession after all.

And and maybe maybe I'm something special.

So, you know, sort of emboldened by all of that.

I thought, I'll get a job soon, You know, somebody would be dying to have me on their paper.

Well, that wasn't the case, you know?

I mean, I don't know if if the events at St Petersburg was sort of a sort of blackballed me or whatever, but for some reason, no jobs went my way for an awfully long time.

And in fact, three years passed before I would get another job.

So I just scratched and clawed and held on to my career by my fingernails for the longest time and made, you know, 12 to $15000 a year doing anything and everything short of squeegee and windshields.

That intersection, you know, to pay my bills.

And and then in 97, the Christian Science Monitor had a job open up and I applied.

And then nine months later, nine really long months later, they called me and wanted to interview me for that job.

So they saved my life.

They saved my career.

Bennet's work at the Christian Science Monitor was provocative and challenging the Pulitzer Prize board cited his originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect when they awarded him the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2000 to an honor he's been nominated for six times.

How significant in your life that was taking home the Pulitzer Prize?

It doesn't make drawing a cartoon any easier.

In fact, it makes it harder because the day after, you know, you become a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, you sort of expect more of yourself.

And so it's it's like it plays to all my neurotic tendencies in a very bad way.

So that way, it's it's not so great.

The great thing is, is that when people introduce you, that you're always introduced as a Pulitzer Prize winning so and so, you know, the first five Words of Europa, all that kind of stuff is true.

And it's look, it's it's terrific.

It's the it's the premiere recognition you can get as a journalist.

And and I had come fallen so short for so many years in a row because it was that was the fourth year in a row I'd made the finalist so I was certain I was going to lose again because the publisher who fired me was on the final board of the Pulitzer Prize.

So they decide which of the three finalists win.

And I was sure he was sabotaging me because, you know, I go up in 99, I lose, I get finalist again in 2000, I lose, you know, 21, I lose.

You know, So it was really more astonishing to be in the finalist that many years in a row than it was to win it.

But you know, I was tickled pink What can I say?

You know, it was it was it was great fun and, you know, is at the monitor.

So we all had a rouse ing party with some sparkling water and, you know, had a big old time.

And it was it was great, though.

I was happy, very happy to win it for the Christian Science Monitor, because, you know, like I say, those people really did save my, you know, my professional life.

I was down and out.

I hadn't drawn a cartoon in three months when they called me for the interview.

If they had not come along, I probably would not be in this profession today.

I have no doubts.

I probably, you know, I wouldn't be in this profession today.

So thankfully they knew nothing about me.

So if they were so great to work for and really catapulted you into the career you're in now, what made you leave?

They were great to work for in many ways, but they were taskmaster.

When it came to cartooning, they would look at my cartoons every day under a microscope just to see if there was anything I was trying to sneak in there, you know.

And so I over ten years there, I had one in every ten cartoons killed on average, rejected by my editors.

They refused to publish them.

So it doesn't sound bad.

10%, one in ten doesn't sound like a bad percentage.

But over ten years, that's a year's worth of work that didn't get published.

So, you know, it was frustrating to me as a cartoonist.

So it's a it's a you know, I owe them everything.

And I gave them ten years of my of my life.

And I think that we were both happy with that ten years.

And then when the job here in Chattanooga became available, I was delighted and jumped at the chance.

Clay's leap of faith from Boston to Chattanooga was certainly a risk.

A progressive voice in the conservative South is hardly a guaranteed fit.

So what convinced him to make the move to Chattanooga?

You know, when I first got here, after my experience in Boston, I would kind of put my foot over here and put my foot over here, you know, kind of testing the water.

And and I was kind of nervous because I hadn't been unfettered ever.

And so I'm kind of like this dog that's running and I keep waiting for the chain to go slack, you know, But it just does it it just keeps letting out and out and out.

So I'm going to keep running.

Now, that's something that you demanded in your contract, or is that something that they used to lure you to Chattanooga?

I think more of the latter.

I mean, they didn't have like actual money to offer me, so they had to come up with some intangible that mitt something.

And to tell you the truth, the editorial freedom means more to me than than money would have.

So it worked out great.

Yeah.

This is the best gig I've ever had.

I love Chattanooga and I love working with this paper.

Tomorrow's cartoon is on this one.

Williams Four acres at NPR.

Okay.

And now we're sitting here a week after Juan Williams appeared on Bill O'Reilly's show, where he said that when he's in the airport and people in Muslim garb scare him.

So I got this idea last night that I wanted to do.

And I guess here was see, this is how the sketches start.

They just start is little, little thumbnail sketches.

And then I use tracing paper to maybe, you know, fill in some of the detail.

But basically the idea here in a nutshell is it's Halloween.

So a costume party and there are all these figures across the stage and you've got like the Wolf man and you've got Jason from Friday the 13th movies.

You've got a vampire Dracula kind of guy in a in a Frankenstein monster.

And and right in the middle is a woman in Muslim dress, not a burqa, but, you know, headscarf and a long, long dress.

And as she's holding the the loving cup that says scariest costume, you know, and then a couple of the others have second and third place and that and the vampire saying to Frankenstein next to him, we should have never made one.

WILLIAMS The judge is so, so fairly you know, she is the scariest.

I mean, you always you said the world has become, you know, the fodder for your work.

Is that mean you're always on like whatever you do, you're always thinking, how can I make this a cartoon?

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

It's a it's a it's like a 24 seven job.

And it's like I'm like a cop, except with, you know, minus, like the courage and the donuts, you know, I, you know, I'm like, always, you know, you never know when there needs to be an emergency cartoon on something.

I get I have to slide down that fire pole at any moment and do a cartoon.

But yeah, you're always working.

Always working.

And as soon as you finish one cartoon, it's time to start another.

So you can't revel in your successes for very long.

But luckily you can't dwell on your, you know, failings either.