The jackass of America
QUESTION Why were an elephant and a donkey chosen as the symbols of America’s two main political parties?
German-BOrn political cartoonist Thomas nast popularised these symbols, as well as creating the modern images of Uncle Sam and a portly Father Christmas.
nast’s family emigrated to new York in 1846. Having studied at the national academy of Design and working as a draughtsman for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated newspaper, his work began appearing in Harpers Weekly.
His famous cartoons in the 1860s depicted the battlefield horrors of the Civil War and helped bring down the Boss Tweed ring of corrupt politicians.
The Democratic donkey pre-dates nast. In the 1828 presidential campaign, andrew Jackson was labelled a jackass for his populist views.
He seized the label and used the stubborn beasts on his campaign posters.
The symbol was forgotten until 1870 when nast published a cartoon of a donkey kicking a dead lion. The donkey was branded with the name Copperhead Press and the lion was edwin m. Stanton, abraham Lincoln’s secretary-of-war, who had just died. nast, a staunch republican, despised the Copperhead Democrats who opposed the Civil War.
nast continued to use the donkey motif in his cartoons. In 1874, he published one in defence of republican President Ulysses S. Grant, who was thought to be seeking a third term in office.
In the cartoon Third Term Panic, the Democratic new York Herald was depicted as a donkey dressed in a lion’s skin. The donkey, labelled Caesarism, was scaring other animals into a pit labelled inflation and chaos.
One of the frightened animals was an elephant with the label republican Vote, reflecting nast’s view of the party as a confused behemoth.
His first cartoon that used the elephant to represent the republican Party as a whole was published in march 1877. On the heels of the controversial presidential election, he depicted a bruised and battered elephant crouched at a Democratic Party tombstone.
The ailing elephant indicated nast’s belief that republican rutherford B. Hayes’s victory was damaging because he had lost the popular vote.
The labels stuck so the Democratic and republican parties chose to embrace them. The republicans came to portray the elephant as an emblem of strength and intelligence.
Democrats celebrated their symbol of a clever and courageous donkey.
Celia Hanley, Leighton Buzzard, Beds.
QUESTION Why was the German scientist Ernst Haeckel so controversial?
ERNST HAECKEL’S white supremacist theory was the progenitor of nazi race science.
He was born in Potsdam in 1834 and studied medicine in Berlin and Wurzburg. He went on to become a professor of zoology at the University of Jena.
Initially sceptical, Haeckel became a staunch advocate of Darwin’s theory of evolution. He was also a fine scientific illustrator, whose drawings were published as works of art, and an advocate of the public understanding of science.
Haeckel made major contributions to our understanding of biology and introduced terms such as Caucasian, ecology and stem cell.
His controversial status followed the publication of his book Natuerliche Sc hoepfungsg es chich te( natural History
Of Creation) in 1868. It represents humans in a racial hierarchy from lowest (Papuan and Hottentot) to highest (Caucasian, including the Indo-German and Semitic races). Harvard palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote: ‘Haeckel’s evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a “just” state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilisation and nature alike, conferring upon favoured races the right to dominate others . . . all contributed to the rise of nazism.’ Haeckel is accused of using misleading images to promote his ideas. He believed embryos passed through the evolutionary stages of the species and lined up pictures of human development alongside equivalent stages in the development of turtles, chickens and dogs. The text ran: ‘If you compare the young embryos . . . you will not be in a position to perceive a difference.’ However, it soon emerged that the images claimed by Haeckel to be from three different vertebrates were, in fact, electrotype copies made from a single woodcut. nevertheless, these images were used in textbooks until late into the 20th century and have caused significant damage to evolutionary science. Ian Solomon, Tring, Herts.
QUESTION Why was one of the episodes of the original Hawaii Five-0 banned?
SeaSOn 2, episode 16 of the popular, exotic police procedural drama series had the disturbing title Bored She Hung Herself.
The prime suspect in the death of a woman is a ‘health freak’ called Don, a stock hippie character from late 1960s TV. But it emerges the innocent Don had been framed by his neighbour.
When it aired on January 7, 1970, Hawaii Five-0 was one of the top rated shows on U.S. TV and millions tuned in.
Unfortunately, one viewer attempted to emulate a highly dangerous so- called yoga technique demonstrated by Don and it went tragically wrong.
The parents of the deceased sued CBS and the episode was pulled forever.
Danny Ecker, Brighton. IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.
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