15 Artists Invited to Lunch : Best Cartoons Taped to Refrigerator--Reagan

President Reagan invited 15 political cartoonists to lunch today, took up the pen to draw a self-portrait and told his guests their greatest tribute is having their work “taped to a refrigerator door.”

Among the 15 were five Pulitzer Prize winners but absent were some of the worst thorns in the Administration’s side, including Paul Conrad of the Los Angeles Times, Herbert Block of the Washington Post and “Doonesbury” artist Garry Trudeau.

Conrad and Block have won three Pulitzers and Trudeau has won one.

A White House spokesman said no one was blackballed.

But Conrad said in Los Angeles: “I’m almost certain I would not be invited. I would have been very surprised if I had been. Besides, it’s a hell of a long way to go for lunch, anyway.”

Reagan told the cartoonists that their occupation is “a little peculiar in the system used to judge distinction. In football, it’s the number of touchdowns scored; in Hollywood it’s the number of Oscars won. But for a cartoonist the greatest treatment is to be clipped and taped to a refrigerator door.”

Reagan, whose doodles have been pictured in newspapers, then went to an easel and drew what White House spokesman Edward Djerejian called an “autoportrait.”

The spokesman said the self-portrait would not be released to the press but is “bound for the (National) Archives.”

Bob Englehart of the Hartford Courant then stepped up and caricatured Reagan, followed by Dick Locher of the Chicago Tribune, who pictured Reagan thinking of a new attorney general: Dick Tracy.

Although some of the most liberal cartoonists were not invited, others of their fraternity were, including Pat Oliphant of the Universal Syndicate, Mike Peters of the Dayton Daily News and Paul Szep of the Boston Globe.

Also attending the lunch were Jeff MacNelly of the Chicago Tribune, Bill Mauldin of the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim Borgman of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Bay Rigby of the New York Post, David Seavey of USA Today, Ed Gamble of the Florida Times-Union, Bill Garner of the Washington Times, Wayne Stayskal of the Tampa Tribune, Gary Brookins of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Paul Rigby of the New York Daily News.