[pf] Donkey/Elephant Symbols

by Molly Williams

14 December 2000 22:01 UTC

Responding to a thread from earlier in the week...

There seem to be a plethora of explanations for the adoption (unofficial
for the donley, official for the elephant) of the animal symbols to
represent the two major political parties in the U.S. Here's one of the
better and more common explanations:

How did Republicans pick the elephant, and Democrats the donkey, to
represent their parties? Long Island, New York 

                 They didn't pick these labels – they got stuck with
them! Their origin as symbols for the parties is attributed to a
political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, who used the donkey and the elephant
in cartoons drawn for Harper's Weekly in the 1870's. Why Nast chose the
donkey and the elephant is a pretty complicated story. 

One version traces it to the "Central Park Menagerie Scare of 1874," a
hoax foisted on its readers by the New York Herald newspaper. The Herald
ran a deliberately false story about animals breaking out of the zoo and
foraging for food throughout Central Park. Around the same time, the
Herald was running a series of editorials against a 3rd term for
President Ulysses S. Grant, calling the possibility "Caesarism." 

Nast combined these two elements together for the first time in an 1874
cartoon for Harper's Weekly. He had a donkey disguised as a lion trying
to scare away the animals in a forest. The donkey was a symbol for the
New York Herald; the lion-skin costume was a symbol for a scare tactic
[the paper crying wolf with "Caesarism"], and the animals in the forest
were the symbol for the newspaper's hoax about zoo animals in Central
Park. 

One of the animals frightened by the donkey's roar of Caesarism was an
elephant – a symbol for Republican voters, who were abandoning President
Grant, and in Nast's view, about to fall into the Democrats' trap. Other
cartoonists of the time picked up the idea of the timid elephant
representing Republicans, and that symbol for the party became widely
recognized and accepted by the general public. 

Although Nast's original interpretation used the donkey to stand in for
a Democrat-leaning newspaper scaring away Republican voters, his cartoon
showing a duplicitous donkey attacking a weak-minded elephant [does this
remind anyone else of how clever, intelligent Gore was portrayed as
thinking he was so much smarter than the Idiot Bush?], became a handy
symbol for other cartoonists wanting to represent Democrats attacking
Republicans. Popular recognition of the image overrode the party's own
wishes – the Democratic party has never officially adopted the donkey as
its emblem, but came to accept the reality that the symbol had stuck. 

Another [common] explanation for the donkey as political symbol stems
from the 1828
presidential campaign -- during which Andrew Jackson was labeled a
"jackass," for his populist views. Jackson proudly seized the label and
began using donkeys on his campaign posters. During his presidency,
cartoonists sometimes used the donkey to illustrate President Jackson's
stubbornness on certain issues. After Jackson, the donkey symbol largely
faded, to be revived again by Thomas Nast in his 1870's cartoons. 

Over time, Republicans came to view the elephant emblem as a sign of
strength and intelligence, while their opponents portrayed it as a timid
and clumsy behemoth. Democrats seized the "jackass" label, and
transformed it into a clever and courageous donkey. 

[from http://www.c-span.org/questions/week174.htm]

Further info on the donkey:
http://www.democrats.org/hq/history/donkey.html
Further info on the elephant: http://www.rnc.org/2000/elephant

~ Molly
-- 
Molly Williams
Volunteer, Waterboro Public Library: http://www.waterboro.lib.me.us
Web Maintainer, PROP: http://www.propeople.org (Portland, ME)
mmw@waveinter.com

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a
horrible warning." -- Catherine Aird