2010.54.976

• electoral arena

Poster is printed on white paper and has a yellow background. Top edge of the poster has a blue banner with the text "The Amazing, Stupendous, Fantastic, and Totally Unbelievable / Republican circus". The left edge has three red frames that each contain a drawing and are labeled by a white banner with black text. The top frame has a drawing of John Wilkes Booth assassinating Abraham Lincoln the text reads: "Historic Tableaux / The First Republican President". The middle frame has a drawing of a man with a briefcase in a wide brimmed hat running as another man shoots at him, the text reads: "Garfield misses his train". The bottom frame has a drawing of a man in black shooting a man in brown in the chest at close range, the text reads: "McKinley Meets an Anarchist". The center of the poster has a stylized drawing of two elephant mid-jump above a long line of men in suits. Atop the elephant on the left is a cowboy with a gun and atop the elephant to the right is a clown in a football uniform. To the left of the elephants is a clown running, to the right is a circus ring leader in top hat and glasses cracking his whip. Just below the ringleader a small hand attached to a text box points at the long row of men being jumped, the text box reads: "The Living Boulevard of / Well Trampled Tax-Payers". Below the image there is text: "Featuring the Behemoth Pachyderm Race to the White House / Kansas City / Penn Valley Park / August 13-19, 1976 / Free Dope, Food, Music". More small text describes how and where to protest. The right edge has three red frames that each contain a drawing and are labeled by a white banner with black text. The top frame has a drawing of an older man in a football uniform sticking his right hand in a blender and eating bread with his left, the text reads: "Hysteric Tableaux / The Present Republican President". The middle frame has a drawing of a man in a yellow suit filing his nails while in the background there is a man in a Nazi uniform, the text reads: "The One Before That". The bottom frame has a drawing of a man in a long brown trench coat asking a man in a tuxedo for a dime, the text reads: "Hoover's Depression". Peter Bramley (1945-2005) was the first art director of the National Lampoon. [LMC]