In an effort to clean up the homepage a little bit, I’m going to get rid of the “A History Lesson” link under the Ukulele Ike photo. For future reference, this post should permanently address the question “Why do you have a snake in your logo?”

Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die”, which depicts a snake whose severed parts represent the Colonies, is acknowledged as the first political cartoon in America. The image had an explicitly political purpose from the start, as Franklin used it in support of his plan for an intercolonial association to deal with the Iroquois at the Albany Congress of 1754. It came to be published in “virtually every newspaper on the continent”; reasons for its widespread currency include its demagogic reference to an Indian threat as well as its basis in the popular superstition that a dead snake would come back to life if the pieces were placed next to each other. Franklin’s snake is significant in the development of cartooning because it became an icon that could be displayed in differing variations throughout the existing visual media of the day– like the “Don’t Tread on Me” battle flag– but would always be associated with the singular causes of colonial unity and the Revolutionary spirit. In the same way that Biblical stories are an element of shared culture, “Join or Die” became a symbol to which all Americans could respond. Even though the Albany Congress was a failure, Franklin’s snake had established a connection between a drawing and a specific political idea in the American imagination.

-from Uniting Mugwumps and the Masses

By the way, does anyone recognize the picture from the logo on the comments popup template?