This, my friends, is the new logo for the 2008 Republic National Convention.

No, really.

As a graphic designer, I’m speechless. No, wait, here’s some speech: “heh heh heh heh hee hee hEE HAW HAW HAW HAW *snort*”.

Gosh, where to begin? Maybe with the bizarre pose that the elephant seems to have adopted. I suppose it’s meant to look as though he (I’m projecting here, but I think it’s safe to assume that the GOP would pick a bull elephant over a cow as their mascot) is rearing up on his hind legs….in triumph, or something. Maybe he just managed to veto a bill to continue sponsorship of health insurance for children. But the ungainly angle makes the stance look less like post-victory and more like pre-trample. Frankly, it appears as though ol’ Stampy there is about to flatten the year Two Thousand and Eight beneath his splayed, Pantone® 287C feet. A fitting sentiment, by many a measure.

The weird positioning of the tail is also of interest to me. The fact that the end of the tail seems bonded with the body of the elephant makes it look like a handle, as though the animal is in fact some sort of baroque cream pitcher. I’m assuming that the designers wanted to avoid showing the tail lifted upward—an obvious option, given that it a) would help to fill heretofore unused space and b) might contribute a sense of movement and action to an otherwise strangely static pose—because they were afraid that this would indicate a willing- and/or readiness on the part of the (presumably) male elephant to be fucked in the ass, something that is definitely not on the official GOP charter, recent men’s room developments notwithstanding. On the other hand, by curling the tail inward they way they did, the effort kind of backfired, making the elephant appear as though he is sodomizing himself with his own appendage. If good old-fashioned buggery is off the “Family Values” Party’s table, I can’t imagine that zoonic autoeroticism ranks particularly high either.

And while we’re dissecting this beast, does anyone else think that the star in the elephant’s eye looks suspiciously like the “X” used in the oeuvre of comics and cartoons to connote a formerly living organism? This looks like the official seal for the 2008 National Convention of the American Association of Ivory Poachers. Someone on another blog suggested that the stripes on the elephant’s back looked like tire tracks; good observation. Or perhaps whip marks. The National Brotherhood of Exotic Species Abusers?

Hmm….come to think of it, that last one may not be far off the mark. Maybe the emblem should have featured an ivoryless elephant on a bun. 🙂