Latest / Ridiculous History / Thomas Nast, Part Two: A Cartoonist Conquers Corruption (and Moves to Ecuador)

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Thomas Nast, Part Two: A Cartoonist Conquers Corruption (and Moves to Ecuador) · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: This is mister Noel Brown.
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Speaker 3: I guess part I part of that as well, though, so.
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Speaker 1: That doesn't make it right. So this is this is
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Speaker 1: part two of our continuing series on Thomas Nass. We're
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Speaker 1: having a heck of a time with it. Before we
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Speaker 1: get back into the story, please listen to part one.
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Speaker 1: And Noel Max, I thought you guys might enjoy a
1:52
Speaker 1: joke from our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. It's a comment.
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Speaker 1: Do you remember our early your conversation with Ben from
2:01
Speaker 1: Badass of the Week? Absolutely, yeah, okay, so we talked
2:05
Speaker 1: about love pit and uh, Aaron m had the following
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Speaker 1: to say, quote, it seems like if all these bad
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Speaker 1: girls were sent to nutneries, nunneries would be pretty fun.
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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, Well, I mean they have activities. They
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Speaker 4: probably do archery and stuff. I'm sure there's plenty of
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Speaker 4: fun things to do at nunneries, despite getting into uh,
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Speaker 4: sexual escapades, you.
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Speaker 1: Know, sure, you know, gardening, singing, twirling on hilltops. Yeah, probably,
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Speaker 1: like making fabrics.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, weaving and giving penance, which I think is the
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Speaker 4: most important past time of all.
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Speaker 1: Also, we have to uh, we have to do one
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Speaker 1: more announcement before we get into part two. Everybody seems
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Speaker 1: super down for Ridiculous History Dungeons and Dragons episode. What
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Speaker 1: classes are we choosing any character sheets?
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Speaker 4: Okay, I'll have to do a little homework.
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Speaker 2: My big question is is Strickling going to be the
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Speaker 2: villain or are we going to do this poorly?
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Speaker 4: Oh well, we were talking about potentially having some sort
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Speaker 4: of historical villain, which I'm not saying Strickland doesn't occupy
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Speaker 4: that space for us, but maybe someone a little older.
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Speaker 4: Like here's a pitch.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, whoever we picked to be the villain we have
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Speaker 2: played by as aforementioned person we will not say name
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Speaker 2: of again and.
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Speaker 1: Character because of the rule.
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Speaker 4: He could do a resputant kind of situation.
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Speaker 3: I think we can have him do boss tweet.
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Speaker 1: Anyway, Here is part two of Thomas Nast in eighteen seventy.
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Speaker 1: Nast decides to go for the boss himself, and he
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Speaker 1: apparently wins. He wins through the power of I quite
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Speaker 1: like the way you put it earlier in Noll weaponized Wit.
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Speaker 4: Well, and that's the thing I mean again, this is
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Speaker 4: something I'm struggling with because I've always seen Nast as
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Speaker 4: this sort of iconoclastic, you know, creator of these images
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Speaker 4: that get seared into your mind. And maybe I'm more
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Speaker 4: associating some of the more Gonza stuff that came later
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Speaker 4: as being a little more unapologetically kind of anti establishment.
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Speaker 4: But he had an establishment in a way that he
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Speaker 4: was loyal to, and he had an idea of what
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Speaker 4: America was that he was loyal to. But then he
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Speaker 4: had these sort of what he saws as enemies of that,
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Speaker 4: you know, and Boss Tweed absolutely was that to a tee.
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Speaker 2: And I will say one thing about nast is he
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Speaker 2: was unapologetic in his own beliefs. So in some cases,
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Speaker 2: like you know, his beliefs were aligning, he was virulently
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Speaker 2: anti slavery. But he also had a lot of cartoons
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Speaker 2: about we'll talk about this later that were very.
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Speaker 4: Well.
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Speaker 2: They were probably bad at the time, and they've aged
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Speaker 2: even worse because he was just very much He seems
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Speaker 2: like he might have been a little tricky to work
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Speaker 2: with just in general, but no way, he was very
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Speaker 2: much like he had his stance and these are things
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Speaker 2: he's gonna believe in, and these first couple of cases,
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Speaker 2: they align a lot of times with the good side
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Speaker 2: of history.
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Speaker 3: But that's not his entire story. Always.
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Speaker 1: We should also just say he was not a note taker.
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Speaker 1: He's Thomas no notes nest, which made him difficult to
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Speaker 1: work with.
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Speaker 4: This is all off the dome, for sure. I mean, like, yeah,
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Speaker 4: I know that perspective is inherent, but I guess you
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Speaker 4: could maybe almost call him we might consider a libertarian today,
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Speaker 4: Like I don't know, Like he's just like he was
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Speaker 4: staunchly in favor of this idea of the American dream
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Speaker 4: and of equity and of of you know, fairness and
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Speaker 4: municipal reform and all this stuff. And Tweed was just
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Speaker 4: absolutely an antithesis to all of those things, you know,
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Speaker 4: in terms of his wanting to take from the common
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Speaker 4: man and woman and just you know, own everything and
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Speaker 4: you know, achieve his power through the most undemocratic means possible,
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Speaker 4: you know, from within the system. He's like, that's not
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Speaker 4: gonna fly in my America.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Also, let's uh, let's note that earlier beautiful point about literacy.
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Speaker 1: So he is nast is aware that many of the
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Speaker 1: people who I guess we call him constituents, but the
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Speaker 1: the servants or the public exploited by Tweed, A lot
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Speaker 1: of those folks cannot read. So you can publish a
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Speaker 1: written article in the New York Times all day long,
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Speaker 1: and they're not gonna they're not gonna digest it because
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Speaker 1: they are not they're not functionally literate. But with a
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Speaker 1: cartoon with a single panel, Thomas Nast can speak to
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Speaker 1: these folks directly. And uh and Tweed apparently got so
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Speaker 1: irritated about this boss Tweed that he gave orders to
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Speaker 1: I think he's just shouting in a room at this point,
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Speaker 1: but you know, in like a smoky Chicago back room.
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Speaker 1: He goes, stop those damn pictures.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. This is obviously before the moving pictures. Uh,
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Speaker 4: and this would have been those Yeah, that's what they were.
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Speaker 4: And they were damnable indeed, because to your point, they
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Speaker 4: depicted exactly the rot that was going on, you know,
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Speaker 4: in that kind of political machine that was influencing and
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Speaker 4: affecting and sort of controlling, puppet mastering the democratic process
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Speaker 4: of what people saw as their rights as citizens. This
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Speaker 4: guy was actually taking a shortcut to influence that process
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Speaker 4: that should have been held very near and dear to
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Speaker 4: folks if they could just understand what was going on.
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Speaker 4: And so he's I'm trying to we should probably just
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Speaker 4: describe one of these cartoons and like, what's so effective
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Speaker 4: about it. First of all, you might remember one of
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Speaker 4: the very first panels that I described early in the
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Speaker 4: show of this kind of you know, portly gentleman in
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Speaker 4: a striped suit with like a medallion, with his hands
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Speaker 4: it deep in his pockets, and a giant bag of money,
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Speaker 4: one of those old school kind of cartoony sacks of
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Speaker 4: money with a dollar sign as a head. And then
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Speaker 4: you know, he just portrayed Tweed as this sort of
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Speaker 4: larger than life force of evil. There's another image where
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Speaker 4: there's a police officer who is depicted as being really
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Speaker 4: small and Boss Tweed again with the striped suit, jacket
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Speaker 4: and slacks on and his hands deep in his pockets,
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Speaker 4: being massive and dwarfing this. And then the policeman has
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Speaker 4: got like an inmate in his fist who's even smaller
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Speaker 4: than the policeman, with a ball and chain connected to
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Speaker 4: his leg. The idea of like Boss Tweed is above
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Speaker 4: all of this and he can never be reached, and
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Speaker 4: that's not cool.
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Speaker 2: I gotta say what I think is my favorite one.
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Speaker 2: This is the first one I think I was ever
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Speaker 2: acquainted with back as a young history nerd. But it
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Speaker 2: is he reads at the bomb, says who stole the
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Speaker 2: people's money.
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Speaker 3: Do tell.
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Speaker 2: And it's a bunch of people pointing to the right.
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Speaker 2: Is this a circle, a ring of everyone who's like, no, no, no,
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Speaker 2: I steal the money. He stole the money, And it
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Speaker 2: just goes around because it's very much that thing where
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Speaker 2: the truth is they all did.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that is true. Is the issue there, and I
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Speaker 1: appreciate you pointing that out.
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Speaker 3: Max.
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Speaker 1: There's also let's go back to this Tweed moment, right,
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Speaker 1: because Boss Tweed is a very powerful man in charge
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Speaker 1: of an extremely dangerous organization. At this point, when he
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Speaker 1: says stop something. When he's doing this Jay Jonah Jamison
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Speaker 1: hitting the fist on the desk kind of thing. When
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Speaker 1: he's yelling stop them damn pictures, he's not just speaking
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Speaker 1: into the void. He actually sends a proxy of his
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Speaker 1: to Thomas Nast and they try to grifft them. They say, oh,
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Speaker 1: we are European fans of your artworks, and we will
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Speaker 1: give you one hundred thousand dollars to study art in Europe. Basically,
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Speaker 1: they tried to ship him off. They're thinking, surely he'll
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Speaker 1: find something more interesting than New York, right, just get
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Speaker 1: out of town, and just so we can inflation, calculate
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Speaker 1: this one hundred thousand dollars at that time was about
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Speaker 1: any almost one point eight million dollars today.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I guess they're thinking, like, let the
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Speaker 4: Paris Review have him or something. Surely we can appeal
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Speaker 4: to his ego in some way and offer him this
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Speaker 4: exorbitant amount of money that he probably won't take as
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Speaker 4: you know, hush money or get out of town money.
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Speaker 4: He probably doesn't have any scruples, you know, right, surely.
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Speaker 1: Sure, yeah. So he basically does the does this song
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Speaker 1: and dance with these Tweed representatives, and he says, maybe
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Speaker 1: maybe maybe I will hang out with you guys in Europe.
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Speaker 1: Maybe I will engage your offer. But one hundred thousand
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Speaker 1: dollars that's not quite enough to wet my whistle. So
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Speaker 1: he increases the offer. They come back to him. They
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Speaker 1: eventually offer him five hundred thousand dollars just to go
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Speaker 1: to Europe, and then he turns it down and he
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Speaker 1: makes a moral decision. He says, look, I get it,
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Speaker 1: everybody likes money, but I made up my mind a
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Speaker 1: long time ago to put Tammany Hall behind Mars.
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Speaker 4: It's so neat because I mean, this is one of
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Speaker 4: the rare occasions of the story seems pretty apocryphal, but
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Speaker 4: this actually definitely happens. And then this is a perfect
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Speaker 4: example of someone who is more interested in, you know,
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Speaker 4: following their convictions and doing what's right and getting the
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Speaker 4: bad guy then money, and that's pretty rare in the history.
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Speaker 4: It's pretty great.
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Speaker 3: I also think it's a pointing out from everything, right.
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Speaker 2: I don't know know if this is an actual fact,
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Speaker 2: but it appears that Nast was doing fiscally pretty well
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Speaker 2: at this point.
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Speaker 4: He had to have been for the time.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, at this point he is one of the go
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Speaker 1: to guys. He's becoming in a very real way, the
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Speaker 1: voice of America. He has this unique visual style that
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Speaker 1: in forms many other cartoonists coming after him. So when
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Speaker 1: people again, when people see his work printed on a page,
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Speaker 1: to them, it is authoritative. There is credibility, and he
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Speaker 1: doesn't want to sacrifice that. So Tweed sends his crew
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Speaker 1: after Harper's itself and they threaten to boycott the Harper's textbooks.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess they had like a sort of like
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Speaker 4: big publishing houses often have a that that provides textbooks,
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Speaker 4: and that's big money because the schools essentially have contracts
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Speaker 4: with them and buy every new updated version like forever
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Speaker 4: in all time. So I could see how that would
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Speaker 4: be a big deal, a big chunk of their business.
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Speaker 4: But they don't cave either. They decide that it's more
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Speaker 4: important to support Nast and take down and I think
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Speaker 4: maybe they're like kind of putting their hat in the
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Speaker 4: ring because they're like, I don't know, man, if we
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Speaker 4: keep doing what we're doing and publishing Nast comics, Tammany
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Speaker 4: Hall might not be a thing or be in a
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Speaker 4: position to boycott anything.
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Speaker 1: However, you know, the rubber can always hit the road,
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Speaker 1: and Nast to have very real concerns that there might
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Speaker 1: be physical harm visited upon him and his family. So
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Speaker 1: they moved out of New York City to Moorestown, New
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Speaker 1: Jersey in eighteen seventy one. And they thought, you know,
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Speaker 1: close enough to commute far and off away, that old
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Speaker 1: Willie Tweed won't get him. The public response, according to
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Speaker 1: the Museum of the City of New York, fantastic check
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Speaker 1: it out. There was this election in eighteen seventy one,
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Speaker 1: and this election was the beginning of the end for
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Speaker 1: the Tweed Ring. For Tammany Hall, a lot of the
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Speaker 1: tammany candidates were voted out of office, and a huge
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Speaker 1: part of why they were voted out of office is
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Speaker 1: Nast cartoons that depicted the corruption nakedly and hilariously.
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Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you know, speaking of where the rubber
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Speaker 4: hits the road, I mean, I think there's a real
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Speaker 4: understanding that this stuff has significant power to change things,
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Speaker 4: you know, and to expose people. And I think that's
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Speaker 4: why these publishers were able to continue to support Nast
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Speaker 4: and not cave to the pressure, because no, I think
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Speaker 4: we can actually do something here, and in a time
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Speaker 4: when you know, maybe journalism seems to not have the
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Speaker 4: teeth that used to have, or it's been sort of
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Speaker 4: diluted a little bit or a lot of bit by
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Speaker 4: the Internet and by you know, kind of all the
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Speaker 4: fake news outlets and whatever and just this kind of
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Speaker 4: you know, echo chamber. It's pretty inspiring to see this
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Speaker 4: kind of support for somebody being so incredibly controversial and
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Speaker 4: you know, speaking truth to power.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he also is becoming increasingly dangerous, right or you know,
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Speaker 1: now this guy is no longer just a cartoonist. Now
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Speaker 1: he is kind of a John Stewart character. Now he's
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Speaker 1: like the daily Show, but in one panel at a
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Speaker 1: time cartoons and his commentary has real effect, as you
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Speaker 1: were saying, after that election in eighteen seventy one, which
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Speaker 1: was disastrous for Tammany Hall, there are legal charges brought
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Speaker 1: against Boss Tweed and his allies, and we talked about
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Speaker 1: this in a previous episode, things like forgery, fraud, large
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Speaker 1: and the cavalcade, a cavalcade of not good stuff and
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Speaker 1: a lot of the guys end up getting shipped off
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Speaker 1: to prison. As we know. In eighteen seventy five, Boss
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Speaker 1: Tweed escaped prison and set sail to Spain, and it
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Speaker 1: would have gotten away with it too, except a Spanish
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Speaker 1: officer recognized him from wait for it, a cartoon by
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Speaker 1: Thomas Nast.
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Speaker 4: And it's really interesting if you actually look at some
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Speaker 4: portraits that you can find of what Boss Tweed, you know,
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Speaker 4: looked like those again, those like stock still with the
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Speaker 4: weird background, oftentimes oval framed portraits. There's a handful of those,
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Speaker 4: and he really is doing a caricature Nast, because he's
16:44
Speaker 4: got this very specific kind of nose, you know, and
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Speaker 4: these very specific kind of jowls and certain things that
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Speaker 4: he sort of exaggerates just enough. It's not over the top.
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Speaker 4: It's actually somewhat at times subtle. But as it progresses,
16:58
Speaker 4: it gets more and more grown Tesk and he gets
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Speaker 4: fatter and fatter, and by the end when he does
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Speaker 4: get the ring gets toppled. There's a fabulous image that
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Speaker 4: Nasted of a sort of like Caesar dressed Boss Tweed
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Speaker 4: in like a surrounded by boots and hats, and it
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Speaker 4: says the Tammany boys whipped out of their boots and
17:22
Speaker 4: Tammany rings smashed, and it's all kind of on these
17:25
Speaker 4: like plaques in the background like it's carved into stone.
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Speaker 4: But he looks like a sad Caesar holding a broken
17:31
Speaker 4: sword and again just monstrously fat, with these really dark
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Speaker 4: circles under his eyes. He's got progressively more and more
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Speaker 4: kind of grotesque.
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Speaker 1: As they went on, the eyes become increasingly sunken. There
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Speaker 1: are also there are also pictures or depictions of Tweed
17:50
Speaker 1: and his cronies as vultures, which are kind of haunting.
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Speaker 1: And this what's nuts about this is if you look
17:59
Speaker 1: at an actual photograph of Tweed, you see what Nast
18:05
Speaker 1: used for reference. He is clearly talking about this guy. Also,
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Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say it Billy Tweed looks kind of
18:15
Speaker 1: like a jerk, you know what I mean. He looks
18:17
Speaker 1: like he takes the last slice of cake. I think
18:20
Speaker 1: that speaks the last doughnut, you know, I mean, I
18:23
Speaker 1: think he takes the last slice of cake. Is a
18:26
Speaker 1: very large slice of cake too, that he takes.
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Speaker 4: True, he doesn't.
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Speaker 3: Feel very bad at all about it.
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Speaker 1: He looks, you know what it is in every in
18:34
Speaker 1: the actual photographs I've seen in the guy, he looks
18:37
Speaker 1: like he's hiding candy in his mouth. It's like, which
18:41
Speaker 1: I know is a very specific, weird insult. I don't
18:44
Speaker 1: even know, like he's courting it like a squirrels and cheeks.
18:48
Speaker 4: He does have a bit of a tight lipped appearance.
18:51
Speaker 4: It just seems like the guy liked accumulating stuff, you know,
18:54
Speaker 4: whether there's money or power or whatever. But he does
18:57
Speaker 4: get recognized by that Spanish officer from the cartoon, which
19:01
Speaker 4: at this point had international acclaim, you know, and he
19:05
Speaker 4: goes back to prison, the New York jail in fact,
19:07
Speaker 4: where he remains until his death in eighteen seventy eight.
19:10
Speaker 4: And Ben, me and you were actually going to New
19:12
Speaker 4: York this week, and I was thinking it'd be fun
19:15
Speaker 4: to check out the Museum of the City of New
19:17
Speaker 4: York is. This is the first time I've heard of this,
19:19
Speaker 4: and I bet you. I mean, New York has such
19:21
Speaker 4: a fantastically rich history. I'd love to go to a
19:23
Speaker 4: museum just dedicated to New York in New York. That
19:26
Speaker 4: might be fun.
19:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.
19:28
Speaker 1: They also we're going to be hanging out at one
19:30
Speaker 1: of the oldest public houses in New York, Francis Tavern.
19:35
Speaker 4: I've been there before. I know exactly where that place is. Yep,
19:38
Speaker 4: that's exactly totally forgot that's where it was.
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Speaker 3: It is.
19:40
Speaker 4: It looks like you're in this era. It's in the
19:43
Speaker 4: Financial District, and that's going to be so fun. Oh,
19:46
Speaker 4: I totally forgot. It was at France's the.
19:48
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about air so now we actually have
19:51
Speaker 1: to do it. Oh definitely, man, all right, let's do it.
19:54
Speaker 1: We're back, so no holding back, right Verry Thomas nast
19:59
Speaker 1: of Us. After the fall of Tammany Hall, Thomas moves
20:04
Speaker 1: on to new targets and he is taking shots at everyone.
20:10
Speaker 1: According to Our White House, which you can find online
20:15
Speaker 1: our white House dot org. According to Our White House
20:19
Speaker 1: and many other sources, this one guy is credited with
20:25
Speaker 1: perpetuating the donkey and elephant symbols for the Democratic and
20:31
Speaker 1: Republican parties. He didn't originate these necessarily, but he did
20:38
Speaker 1: popularize them and cement them in American culture because again,
20:43
Speaker 1: he's kind of a John Stewart at this point. He's
20:46
Speaker 1: that's one of the best comparisons I can imagine. He
20:50
Speaker 1: is a John Stewart via cartoons in the eighteen hundreds.
20:54
Speaker 4: I've always thought it was interesting that the both parties
20:57
Speaker 4: sort of willingly used these symbols because they sort of
20:59
Speaker 4: seem like kind of potshots, you know, that he's putting
21:03
Speaker 4: out like kind of mocking them for being either you know,
21:07
Speaker 4: penny pinching, I guess, the elephant, the idea never forgets
21:09
Speaker 4: are being too pedantic, and then the others being I
21:13
Speaker 4: guess kind of jackasses. I've always wondered, like, I don't know,
21:17
Speaker 4: it does not seem very complimentary, and maybe that's the point.
21:21
Speaker 4: It's the idea of like, you know, keeping these as
21:23
Speaker 4: symbols sort of like represents this idea that the parties
21:26
Speaker 4: don't take themselves too seriously.
21:28
Speaker 3: But we all know that's not true.
21:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, the we know the donkey itself was associated with
21:37
Speaker 1: Democrats as early as eighteen thirty seven. But Thomas Jackass himself,
21:42
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson, Yeah yeah, but Thomas Nice, no do it
21:46
Speaker 1: Max with the facts on that one.
21:47
Speaker 4: Oh, here it goes.
22:09
Speaker 1: We know that Nast popularized the donkey, popularized the elephant.
22:15
Speaker 1: To your point, Nol, I think about this a lot,
22:19
Speaker 1: like how they chose the how they chose these symbolic mascots.
22:25
Speaker 1: I wonder what other animals would be useful. It's strange
22:30
Speaker 1: that the bald eagle has become just a general America
22:34
Speaker 1: symbol and no one party can control it. Right. Also,
22:40
Speaker 1: elephants are really cool, man.
22:42
Speaker 4: They're super cool, you know, jack. Donkeys are cool. They
22:46
Speaker 4: can carry lots of stuff. But again, it's not a
22:49
Speaker 4: particularly complimentary and I have noticed. I guess maybe I'm wrong, right,
22:53
Speaker 4: I'm not watching the right shows. But it does feel
22:55
Speaker 4: like the parties have sort of lead away from using
22:57
Speaker 4: these images as much as maybe they want. I don't know,
23:01
Speaker 4: what do you think, Max? Do you still see images
23:05
Speaker 4: of the donkey and the elephant associated with the parties?
23:08
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like it might be more like
23:11
Speaker 2: outside people using it. I mean, I still can't believe
23:14
Speaker 2: the Republican Party calls themself the Grand Old Party, which
23:18
Speaker 2: is which is hilarious because the Democratic Party is actually
23:20
Speaker 2: much older than them.
23:21
Speaker 4: Well.
23:22
Speaker 1: Also also this is very confusing for any of our
23:26
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians not from the United States, and so it's
23:31
Speaker 1: confusing for US Americans too. The Democratic Party now is
23:35
Speaker 1: not the Democratic Party from earlier. We got the turn,
23:39
Speaker 1: we got the turn, we got we got Shyamalans somewhere
23:42
Speaker 1: throughout the course of history. Also, you will, to your question,
23:46
Speaker 1: you will see you will see symbolism of donkeys and
23:53
Speaker 1: elephants in a lot of a lot of political wonk stuff,
23:58
Speaker 1: you know, like when you're getting candidates for electoral colleges
24:03
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. They still have the swag, they
24:05
Speaker 1: still have the merchandise. However, they are not you know,
24:12
Speaker 1: to your point, You're not going to see a Republican
24:15
Speaker 1: or Democratic president wearing a donkey or an elephant pin
24:20
Speaker 1: when they're making a speech, you know.
24:22
Speaker 4: And it was once again a particularly iconic cartoon that
24:26
Speaker 4: solidified these images in history. In eighteen seventy four, Harper's
24:30
Speaker 4: published a cartoon by Nas called Third Term Panic around
24:34
Speaker 4: President Ulysses Grants potential bid for a third term, which
24:39
Speaker 4: is a little on the dictatorial side, right, you know
24:44
Speaker 4: that's not really you.
24:45
Speaker 1: Don't like FDR.
24:47
Speaker 4: I don't like. I mean, I'm not obviously wasn't around
24:51
Speaker 4: during this time, but I think like it wasn't illegal,
24:54
Speaker 4: but it was sort of in bad form, right, right.
24:57
Speaker 1: It wasn't illegal until after World War Two?
25:02
Speaker 2: Probably smart, yeah, because it wasn't until after FDR actually
25:05
Speaker 2: did it. I mean, I know some people had thrown
25:07
Speaker 2: around the idea and Drew Jackson had actually thought about
25:10
Speaker 2: the idea of running for a third term, despite the
25:12
Speaker 2: fact that he was barely alive. But Grant was let's see,
25:17
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it up on the flyer around. Grand
25:18
Speaker 2: was in his fifties at this point.
25:21
Speaker 3: He was young.
25:22
Speaker 1: That's super young and sexy for president at this point.
25:25
Speaker 4: But in any case, it was definitely kind of considered
25:28
Speaker 4: a little bit of a ooh, and this might be
25:30
Speaker 4: a slippery slope kind of situation.
25:32
Speaker 2: It was an implied rule that you would only go
25:34
Speaker 2: two terms because as a Washington did.
25:36
Speaker 1: It was a gentleman's agreement.
25:38
Speaker 4: Like so much stuff, say we've realized now is in politics,
25:44
Speaker 4: you know, the idea of so many things that a
25:46
Speaker 4: president does or can or can't do. The reason historical
25:49
Speaker 4: events we've discovered we're all kind of based on decorum
25:53
Speaker 4: rather than the law. And when you have someone that
25:55
Speaker 4: just doesn't give a crap about decorum, then you start
25:58
Speaker 4: to really realize how many holes can be poked in
26:01
Speaker 4: this very tenuous arrangement. And I think that Nass knew
26:04
Speaker 4: that and knew that this could potentially be a slippery
26:14
Speaker 4: slope into something that he used the term Caesarism to
26:18
Speaker 4: describe in this cartoon where a cartoon donkey wearing a
26:22
Speaker 4: lion's mass kind of skin with the word Caesarism, which
26:26
Speaker 4: is this idea of kind of like the power grabbing right,
26:29
Speaker 4: and the elephant is being scared away by the donkey
26:32
Speaker 4: in the lion's clothing, the elephant bearing the words Republican votes. Yeah.
26:37
Speaker 1: So the idea then is, and we'll see this later
26:40
Speaker 1: in a lot of different propaganda, the idea is what
26:43
Speaker 1: we call like a paper tiger, you know, the opposite
26:48
Speaker 1: of a wolf in sheep's clothing. This is a he
26:53
Speaker 1: is arguing that Grant is pretending to be something more
26:58
Speaker 1: than it is right as a as a political force.
27:02
Speaker 1: It also reminds us symbolically of the old trope of
27:06
Speaker 1: the elephant being scared or frightened by a mouse, you
27:09
Speaker 1: know what I mean, and say, the Republican vote is
27:12
Speaker 1: running away from this thing that that could be a
27:17
Speaker 1: threat but is not really a threat. And then eventually,
27:22
Speaker 1: as the Great Game of Telephone continues, people stop thinking
27:27
Speaker 1: of the original propaganda, they stop thinking the word vote,
27:32
Speaker 1: and they just think Republican. Oh I saw a cartoon
27:37
Speaker 1: and they were elephants in the cartoon.
27:39
Speaker 4: That's cool, That's what I like.
27:42
Speaker 1: How Uh that poor kid from TLC her name is
27:46
Speaker 1: not honey booboo, but that's a cash phrase and so
27:50
Speaker 1: now they just started calling her that.
27:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred percent. And sometimes you're you can't really
27:56
Speaker 4: control the way these things go. And because Nas' reach
28:01
Speaker 4: was so vast and his influence so deep, he influenced
28:04
Speaker 4: things that he didn't even realize or maybe wasn't even
28:07
Speaker 4: attempting to. They are all these byproducts from his cartoons
28:10
Speaker 4: that just sort of like embed themselves in history and
28:13
Speaker 4: like in a really interesting way.
28:15
Speaker 1: But he is still kind of a pill to work with.
28:19
Speaker 1: Very he's very powerful. I know what to be careful
28:22
Speaker 1: here because I just said, he's still a pill. He
28:26
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of dear friends of mine
28:29
Speaker 1: who are tattoo artists. You know, they make their decision,
28:33
Speaker 1: they get their mind made up, they stride confidently forward,
28:37
Speaker 1: you know, and they don't take notes.
28:40
Speaker 4: That's right, no notes. So by the eighteen eighties, I
28:44
Speaker 4: would say that Nast's influence or his era was sort of,
28:50
Speaker 4: you know, waning a little bit, right, and Britannica characterizes
28:54
Speaker 4: this period of Nast as being particularly cantankerous. By eighteen
28:58
Speaker 4: eighty five, they say he was constantly having disagreements with
29:01
Speaker 4: the editor of Harper's Weekly and it was just becoming
29:05
Speaker 4: an untenable situation. His final Harper's cartoon came out in
29:09
Speaker 4: eighteen eighty six, and then he sort of kind of
29:12
Speaker 4: became a freelancer. I mean, he's obviously still a big name,
29:16
Speaker 4: even if you know, maybe things were changing a little
29:19
Speaker 4: bit and he wasn't didn't have quite the influence that
29:21
Speaker 4: he once did. So he was working for other publications,
29:24
Speaker 4: you know, kind of like on a case by case basis.
29:26
Speaker 4: But then he ran into some pretty serious financial problems.
29:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not great at working with people, so it
29:32
Speaker 1: might surprise you folks to learn that he eventually lands
29:36
Speaker 1: a job in Ecuador, not as a cartoonist, as the
29:41
Speaker 1: console general in nineteen oho. K, yeah.
29:45
Speaker 4: Okay, why I'd never really thought of him having these
29:50
Speaker 4: sort of aspirations, but I guess it makes sense that
29:52
Speaker 4: he is this political force and he does have experience
29:56
Speaker 4: covering politics of you know, so maybe he makes perfect sense.
30:00
Speaker 3: And maybe it was the only job he made me.
30:03
Speaker 1: That's also.
30:05
Speaker 2: And a minor diplomat is how I saw it written somewhere. Yeah,
30:09
Speaker 2: a friend of his felt really bad for him.
30:12
Speaker 1: It was patronage, if we're being honest, which is kind
30:17
Speaker 1: of the It's like a boss Tweed move. Bussweed gave
30:20
Speaker 1: people bs jobs all the time, so so Tweet does
30:26
Speaker 1: get It is true that he went to Ecuador. He
30:30
Speaker 1: didn't stay long. He accepted the position on July one,
30:36
Speaker 1: nineteen o two, and he did try to do the job.
30:41
Speaker 1: By the way, he wasn't just taking, you know, mailbox money.
30:45
Speaker 1: He wasn't just sitting around getting in check. But he
30:48
Speaker 1: was guilty of bad timing because a yellow fever outbreak
30:54
Speaker 1: rocked Ecuador. He was still helping, or he was attempting
30:58
Speaker 1: to address the pandemic. It really was a plague, and
31:05
Speaker 1: he gets yellow fever himself. On December seventh of nineteen
31:10
Speaker 1: oh two, he dies in Ecuador. He is sixty two
31:14
Speaker 1: years old. His body is returned to the United States.
31:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, two months after I yeah, that's so sad. I mean,
31:22
Speaker 4: I you know, I didn't think about that, Max. That
31:24
Speaker 4: makes perfect sense that, you know he would have been.
31:26
Speaker 4: He alienated so many people. I mean, honestly, if you
31:29
Speaker 4: think about it, he was kind of a professional alienator.
31:32
Speaker 4: It's just he had to be pointed at something. He
31:34
Speaker 4: had to, like, all that negative energy that he had,
31:37
Speaker 4: it kind of had to be aimed at something. Thankfully
31:40
Speaker 4: for us, he focused it at a lot of important causes.
31:43
Speaker 4: I guess you could call him kind of a you know,
31:45
Speaker 4: a righteous ahole. He did, as you mentioned, Max, have
31:50
Speaker 4: some political and racial views that did not age well.
31:54
Speaker 4: He was very anti Irish and depicted them off and
31:57
Speaker 4: as like brawling drunks and you know, not making apologies
32:01
Speaker 4: for that, but you see problematic things enrolled all books
32:04
Speaker 4: and some Doctor SEUs stuff that he did outside of
32:07
Speaker 4: his children's era that would a little bit I believe
32:11
Speaker 4: anti semitic.
32:13
Speaker 2: So there's some troublesome stuff in some of his Doctor
32:15
Speaker 2: SEUs children's book stuff as well.
32:17
Speaker 1: They played the way Theodoric Eisel. You mean the guy
32:20
Speaker 1: who uh, the guy who cheated on his terminally ill wife.
32:27
Speaker 3: Did you know that part?
32:28
Speaker 4: Yeah?
32:29
Speaker 3: I did not know that one. Yeah.
32:31
Speaker 2: I mean granted, the Doctor Seuss group whatever it's called,
32:35
Speaker 2: they pulled the books themselves and then everyone lost their
32:37
Speaker 2: minds over it. One thing I do want to jump into,
32:41
Speaker 2: who Knowle's righteous a whole thing? Like I've always heard
32:44
Speaker 2: it put this way that like professional athletes, to become
32:46
Speaker 2: a professional athlete, you have to be a certain level
32:49
Speaker 2: of egotistical to get that high. And I think to
32:52
Speaker 2: be as great, uh what he was, this he had
32:56
Speaker 2: to be a certain level of an a whole Oh yeah.
32:58
Speaker 1: Well sure you have to, you know, like the good
33:00
Speaker 1: surgeons have a higher incident of sociopathy, right, Like there
33:07
Speaker 1: are there are things that tie in to this. Thomas
33:11
Speaker 1: dask was indeed a man with righteous cause, and he
33:15
Speaker 1: was indignant about bad things. He also yet, as we said,
33:20
Speaker 1: he's opinionated. He's a no notes guy. He is trying
33:25
Speaker 1: to do his best, and in doing so he changed history.
33:30
Speaker 1: As we know it, right, like shout out to the elephants,
33:33
Speaker 1: shout out to the donkeys, shout out to Santa Claus.
33:37
Speaker 1: Come on, man, this guy's pretty cool. I think also,
33:41
Speaker 1: you know, to the point of our mission, he's ridiculous.
33:45
Speaker 4: Oh boy, is the that mustache alone qualifies some for
33:48
Speaker 4: ridiculous status? But man, I think this is a This
33:52
Speaker 4: has made it into a two parter. Yeah, yes, Max,
33:55
Speaker 4: can we get a like a game show? Sound perfect?
34:00
Speaker 1: Uh? No, you are the winner, sir. You have guessed correctly.
34:04
Speaker 1: This is a two parter.
34:06
Speaker 4: But we already know that at this point because you're
34:07
Speaker 4: listening to this second part right. This is only us
34:10
Speaker 4: just now realizing in the moment that we're going to
34:12
Speaker 4: make this a two parter. But thankfully it is a
34:15
Speaker 4: perfect candidate for a two parter because this guy did
34:18
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff and had a lot of eras
34:19
Speaker 4: so hoarded.
34:21
Speaker 1: Live is what we say live, which is kind of
34:27
Speaker 1: a fatuous term, sort of like saying, uh, like when
34:31
Speaker 1: you go to a grocery store and you see stuff
34:33
Speaker 1: advertised as handmade, you.
34:35
Speaker 4: Know, artisanal. This is an artist artistical, this is organic.
34:38
Speaker 1: This is our organic two parter.
34:40
Speaker 4: Uh thanks organic, But it's got lots of gluten full of.
34:44
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for tuning in, Folks, We hope you
34:47
Speaker 1: enjoyed this exploration as much as we did. Big big
34:51
Speaker 1: thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Big big
34:54
Speaker 1: thanks to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs aka the Puzzler. Big
34:59
Speaker 1: thanks to our own boss tweet Jonathan Strickland aka the Quiztor.
35:03
Speaker 4: M hm, he's Jeff Coast. Christoph Fraciota is here in spirit,
35:07
Speaker 4: Alex Williams, who composed this theme. Max to you, of course,
35:11
Speaker 4: as our research associate. If Ben already thanks you. I'm
35:13
Speaker 4: thinking you again, buddy, because you deserve it.
35:15
Speaker 1: Oh, and our own Thomas Nest Nick Benson. Thanks Nick, Yeah.
35:19
Speaker 4: Oh he made it an the episode twice. Well jeez,
35:23
Speaker 4: I guess we'll see you next time, folks. For more
35:32
Speaker 4: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
35:35
Speaker 4: wherever you listen to your favorite shows