A new book titled Flock of Dodos (a book, not the movie, and apparently the two have nothing to do with each other) is coming out, and Glenn Branch of the NCSE tells me it mentions something vile about William Jennings Bryan, the defender of creationism at the Scopes trial. That’s his campaign poster to the right. Look closely, very closely — it’s a rather small image — down at the bottom left. There’s a cephalopod defending the American flag, and some kind of crazed scullery maid attacking it with an axe. Obviously, Bryan was no friend of biodiversity.
The description in the book of this image is like so:
Subtlety was not one of [William Jennings] Bryan’s strong suits. His campaign poster from that same election [1900] depicted, among other things, a sort of Lady Liberty archetype attacking a giant octopus with an axe.
This is clearly an incorrect interpretation. The octopus is central and beautiful, and if that were actually Lady Liberty, she ought to be half-naked. I think it’s Bryan advocating an uprising of the servile classes to destroy loyal invertebrate-Americans, the treacherous dog. I’m glad he lost the election.
Not to spoil the fun with the very first (maybe) post here, but the octopus was used as a metaphor at the time for trusts and monopolies. See this cartoon on the same theme:
http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=October&Date=6
Bryan is a bit of a tragic figure. Yes, at the end of his life he defended the creationist idiocy. But much of the rest of his life, he was a champion of economic justice for the little man. And, from what I understand, he opposed evolution because he objected to the twisting of evolutionary ideas into “Social Darwinism.”
Not to excuse him, because he did have his faults, creationist apologetics foremost among them, but on the other hand he was no Kenneth Hovind.
This reminds me of the climax of Disney’s “Victory Through Air Power,” wherein an eagle (America) strikes at an octopus (Japan).
The journalist and writer Frank Norris was another anti-cephalopod campaigner of the time. See his novel, “The Octopus”.
Poor WJB. He appears to have been a staunch defender of the progressive cause, but he will always be remembered for his role in the monkey trial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jennings_Bryan
A bigger (though B&W) picture can be found here
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/i?pp/PPALL:@field(NUMBER+@band(cph+3a05872))
Someone should write an in-depth analysis of the prevailing anti-tentacle bias in Western cultures…
I sit here just a few miles from Bryan’s home, Fairview.
Every time I think of Bryan I have to sigh.
It’s too bad about that guy.
phat
I sit here just a few miles from Bryan’s home, Fairview.
Every time I think of Bryan I have to sigh.
It’s too bad about that guy.
phat
I am fairly certain PZ has a copy of that.
Latuff: Oiltopus
http://tinyurl.com/2dppha
Nazi poster: Churchill as octopus
http://tinyurl.com/2s6ogg
British cartoon: political parties as octopus
http://tinyurl.com/2ov4t2
Bill Gates as octopus
http://tinyurl.com/2mmcgz
Muslim cartoons depicting terrorism as octopus
http://tinyurl.com/2koz6m
Soviet cartoon: Jewish octopus
http://tinyurl.com/297pnq
scroll down for WTO octopus
http://tinyurl.com/yr7ls8
Standard Oil octopus
http://tinyurl.com/yrtzxh
scroll down for another Standard Oil octopus
http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/envhist/4industrial.html
globalization octopus (warning: crazy website)
http://www.greatdreams.com/political/electric-octopus.htm
British imperialism octopus
http://www.jahsonic.com/Imperialism.html
Scientology octopus
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/time-cover.402x536x8.gif
Okay, I knew that the Octopus was a metaphor for the monopolies. But what I never got was the “Cross of Gold”.
Bryan was for “Free Silver” over the gold standard, of course, but why a CROSS of gold?? I thought WJB was all for crosses?
Was it some kind of reference to the Pope? Or to big burny crosses?
Any rough’n’ready Historian/Economists wanna help me out?
WJB was the first truly vocal creationist. His point of view was definitely early 20th century progressive, and he was very much for the common man. He was well known for his fiery sermons against rampant monopolization of the American economy.
But the other thing he was known for, aside from his religion-steeped creationism and his speaking prowess, was his support for Uncle Joe Stalin and the Soviet Communist system.
And that’s the weird thing about the religious undercurrents of American history. Religion went from being used as a rhetorical and political weapon against Indians and Blacks in the 19th century, to being the emotional and psychological salvation of the poor in the first half of the 20th century, and now back to its dominionist roots in the modern context.
I think if WJB was around today, he’d be wearing red…and I don’t mean Communist.
More context may help:
“Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
In the “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic convention, he actually had the guts to say stuff like this. I’d like to see today’s politicans say something similar:
“The income tax is a just law. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to pay his share of the burden of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.”
“There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.”
Here’s the Cross of Gold part. He’s using the metaphor of the working classes as a “martyr” to the interests of the capital class:
“If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
My understanding is that sticking to the gold standard meant tighter access to money, which maintained the considerable power of the propertied classes, while going to a “bimetalism” standard allowed freer credit and increased inflation, which was seen as generally being in favor of workers and debtors and against the interests of lendors and capital.
Also, like many modern creationists, Bryan could not resist showing the world his tiny cock (upper left, under “no crown of thorns”)…
A friend and former lab-mate is a great-great-…-grandson of him. Kinda looks like him, actually. Really great guy, and hilariously enough, a socialist Christian. But he was a good scientist and not an evolution denier.
@ jeffk, one of my high school band colleagues was also a distant descendant of WJB. Not someone I would have pegged going into science, so I don’t think it’s the same guy…
@ jeffk, one of my high school band colleagues was also a distant descendant of WJB. Not someone I would have pegged going into science, so I don’t think it’s the same guy…
Since when did Bryan support Stalin? Do you have a quote on this? To say Bryan was “known” for supporting Stalin is just misrepresentation. At most, you could characterize him as a socialist.
In any case, Bryan died in 1925, so he even if you’re right, that’s three years of supporting Stalin’s rule, well before the purges and famines really became certain.
Sic Semper Octopus?
Dayum, Colugo, that’s brill!
Here’s another, famous to any Australian history student:
From the Bulletin, 1886, Octopus as racist metaphor. (Founded in 1880, Australia’s premier news magazine carried the legend “Australia for the White Man” on its masthead until 1961 when new editor Donald Horne had it removed.)
My daughter suggested the octopus/lady was a temperance motif. A quick search turned up temperance posters and cartoons of the evil ‘liquor octopus’…like this:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma03/holmgren/prohib/prohib.html
Gosh, the liquor octopus sure looks happy.
Octopus Dei?
http://www.octopusdei.org/
Trying to place Bryan in the context of today’s political climate is particularly difficult. Red or blue? That’s pretty silly.
He did support trust-busting and he did at least talk about support for poor and a lot of what he talked about was the foundation of what became the New Deal. I don’t think Bryan was a “dominionist”. That was 100 years ago.
And Stalin? That is just asinine. How on earth did you make that leap?
phat
In any case, Bryan died in 1925, so he even if you’re right, that’s three years of supporting Stalin’s rule,
Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin did not consolidate his power until 1929 or so (when he won his power struggle with Trotsky) so I don’t see how Bryan ever supported Stalin at all, especially since Stalin was an obscure member of Lenin’s coterie who was far from being the front-runner to replace Lenin. I would doubt that Bryan would even have recognized Stalin’s name in 1925.
Hmm, I seem to have gotten my “facts” incorrect on Mr. Bryan. Not sure who I was thinking of when I typed that. Well, in any case yes he did die in 1925, well before Stalin came to power, so he couldn’t have supported Uncle Joe.
After rereading the Wikipedia entry on him, I think the cited quote from Alan Wolfe is correct in its analysis that WJB lent as much to the Democrats of old, as he lent to the Religious Right Republicans of today.
“After rereading the Wikipedia entry on him, I think the cited quote from Alan Wolfe is correct in its analysis that WJB lent as much to the Democrats of old, as he lent to the Religious Right Republicans of today.”
That’s probably true. He’s easily one of the more complicated and influential men in American political history. I think it very difficult to come up with an easy way of deciding if he was good for the country or bad for the country. He really represented the best and the worst that America has to offer.
Ultimately, though, I think his influence on the New Deal was one of the greatest achievements any single man from this state has ever made. George Norris did as much, if not more. It’s amazing to think that most people here, and in the rest of the country, don’t realize any of this history.
“Inherit the Wind” is a great play, sure. But writing off Bryan as some sort of religious kook, which I think that play does, is silly.
As much as I may dispute his “Christianist” position I defer to him his very good influence on this country. I don’t give very many people that kind of a pass.
He was a suffragist and was married to a lawyer. That says a lot about the guy right there.
phat
Jennnings realised early that you can’t crucify an octopus, hence the axe wielding scullery maid. She’s reducing its limbs from the unbiblical number of eight to however many is needed if you’re a God who so loves the world that he sends his only begotten son to die on the cross for our sins. Tainted love if you ask me, but that’s what they told us He did at Our Lady and Saint Christopher’s school.
Obviously the “scullery maid” is Marianne, symbol of the French Republic. Bryan is showing a heroic Cephalopod-American defending the Union from foreign aggression.
Actually, I think the “scullery maid” is supposed to be Columbia, a very popular personification of the United States in the late 19th century, but virtually unknown today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Columbia
WJB definitely seems like he did more good than bad in his life, and his work on the New Deal is a keystone of that. And though he was a peacemaker first, he wasn’t a total pacifist, and offered himself up for the armed forces when the time came. He was a man, religion or not, willing to put his money where his mouth is.
The only things he can really be called out for are his anti-evolution campaign and his comparative silence with regard to race and equality, though he did express disdain for the KKK.
Wow, he looks just like Dick Cheney in that poster I think.