My Eyes! The Goggles Do Nothing!
Uncle Andrew
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. 🙂
8 Responses to “My Eyes! The Goggles Do Nothing!”
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October 11th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Based on the positioning, it looks like the ‘phant is mounting the “2008”. The subtext here is: “Let’s have another eight years of f***ing the future!”
October 11th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Ooo, good one! Let’s play that out a bit, shall we? The emblem depicts the elephant caught in the act of mounting the upcoming year….but he also appears to be anally stimulating himself with his own tail. Kinky kinky! The subtext? “Vote Republican and the bizarre sex scandals in 2008 will make Larry Craig’s antics look like the Missionary Position.” 😮
October 11th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
*giggle* *snort* *snicker*
I dunno, Roo – a rampant bull elephant seems entirely like the kind of thing that would appeal to the hypermale “we’re studly! we’re not wimps!” GOP imagemongers. And the implicit stomping/f*cking of 2008 as well as the about-to-poop on Minneapolis (elephants lift their tails out of the way when they take a dump) seems entirely like the kind of thing a secretly liberal-leaning graphics designer would be unable to resist throwing in as a joke. 😉
October 11th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Hey, there’s a thought! Maybe some low-level graphics monkey in an agency somewhere decided to go all Disney Subliminal on the GOP. 😆
October 11th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Two words: wide stance.
The conspiracy theorist in me says that the whole Larry Craig thing was a gay voter guerrilla marketing campaign, planned by a right-wing idiot who doesn’t know that “closet” is not a synonym for “bathroom”.
October 12th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Interesting. I’m not sure I agree because I think it’s entirely too likely that there are millions of closeted conservatives who hate themselves enough to perform exactly those kind of hijinks (probably in a desperate attempt to get caught), but considering that ’round last election time I was seriously considering whether the Repus could control the weather, I have to give your theory its due.
But if Larry Craig was a covert marketing campaign, how might that tie in with our Ecstasy-eyed self-sodomizing pachyderm friend here?
October 12th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Andrew: I think you should send your analysis to the RNC. Perhaps they’ll want to redo their graphics.
Dad
October 12th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
But if they redo the emblem, then I’ll have nothing to make fun of. 😉