Anne here, wanting to share a few thoughts on the history of America’s party animals. Not frat boys but our political parties. We all agree that Democrats can be genuine jackasses, but what Republicans have done to besmirch the matriarchal pedigree and social organizations of elephants demands a new party animal.

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign. His opponents called him a jackass (a donkey), and Jackson decided to use the image of the strong-willed animal on his campaign posters. Later, cartoonist Thomas Nast used the Democratic donkey in newspaper cartoons and made the symbol famous. Nast invented another famous symbol—the Republican elephant. In a cartoon that appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1874, Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion’s skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. One of those animals, the elephant, was labeled “The Republican Vote.” That’s all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party. Democrats today say the donkey is smart and brave, while Republicans say the elephant is strong and dignified. via FactMonster.com

Elephants for Real

Real life elephants are matriarchal and hardly a boys club with males making all the rules. All young elephants live with the females until the male elephants reach adolescence. Until this age, he is completely in the care of females — not males, who are not even part of his social organization and have no say in how he is reared.

Truthfully, males and females don’t even live together. Males aren’t out hunting, bringing home dinner for the little lady and kids. Males roam in bachelor herds until they grow older, leaving their boys club to travel alone, except for mating.

Unlike males, the female generations of elephants are known to be very close, grieving for each other when one dies. Elephants are considered to be compassionate, self-aware, and highly intelligent unlike the current Republican crowd.

I’m thinking that GoDaddy.com founder Bob Parsons must be a Republican. A quick Google search confirms that he is. Last September, I posted a link to Bob Parsons taking pleasure in shooting an elephant in Africa — just like Sarah Palin loved gunning down her caribou, in an act of “ethical hunting” she calls it. Presumably, Sarah knows what she’s talking about.

Protest was major against Parsons, who responded in typical Republican fashion that he was doing African farmers a favor in killing the endangered species. It is true that there is a collision between farmers and elephants in Africa.

I argued Parsons’ arrogance over shooting the elephants reflected both his belief in dominionism — that man is in charge of women, animals and all of nature , a cornerstone also of Rick Santorum’s philosophy — and his stupidity in not understanding less violent, more female-centric ways of solving the elephant-African farmer problem.

A female mind — in this case Lucy King of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology is busy building bee fences in Africa to save the elephants, while Parsons is busy murdering these majestic creatures for sport.

Just placing a beehive on land can scare the wits out of most elephants. Scientists speculate that result — after all, there were no bees in the hives — is linked to the fact that the elephants remember painful past encounters with African honeybees and avoid the sights and smells associated with them.

On the one hand we have Republican guy, master of the universe Bob Parsons killing the elephant. On the other we have more progressive, female mind Lucy King scaring the elephants away with empty beehives.

It is exactly this kind of intelligence that today’s Republicans detest — and especially in a woman. Guns and vaginal ultrasounds are their best weapons for keeping herds in line. I beg Republicans to find a new animal to represent the insantity they are perpetuating on America and American women in particular. Elephants don’t deserve this dishonor. Anne