The Donkey and the Elephant (1870)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s January 19h. This day in 1870, a political cartoon by Thomas Mast depicts a donkey to represent southern Democrats. Around this same time, Nast also starts to use the elephant for Republicans.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the very convoluted origins of the very strange mascots — and whether the donkey-elephant divide even works anymore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day an esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:09.0	This day January 15, 1870, in the pages of Harper's Weekly, we find the first recorded use of a donkey to represent the Democratic Party.
0:21.0	We of course now know that the Democratic Party is generally represented by a donkey, the Republicans by an elephant, but that had to come from somewhere.
0:29.0	And that somewhere is the pages of Harper's Weekly and January of 1870. We'll also get into
0:36.7	the origins of the Republican elephant which is around this same time as well so here
0:40.9	we are many many many years later still living with those two
0:43.6	animals here to discuss as always are Nicole Hemer of Vanderbilt and Kelly
0:48.1	Carter Jackson of Wellesley hello there I'm really resisting the urge to he-ha
0:52.1	into the microphone I'll just say hello, Judy.
0:55.6	He has a donkey, what's an elephant is it? What's the name for the sound that an elephant makes?
1:01.2	I don't think there is a
1:02.8	trumpet. That's pretty good.
1:05.1	I can't make that sound.
1:06.5	So hey there.
1:08.0	Hi, go.
1:09.8	While we're on the mascot territory,
1:12.1	it was just occurring to me, what is Vanderbilt's mascot?
1:14.4	What is Wellesley's mascot?
1:15.7	Do we know?
1:16.7	Do you know?
1:17.7	I don't know.
	...

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