I know I am supposed to be working on my book, and indeed I am--a productive day today has made me feel less guilty about blogging. Anyway, following on my last post, I'd like to go further. The earliest elephant's ass I've seen in the media (broadly conceived) is the following:

However, so far as I know, there was no influence of the above image (# 1) on this one:

I cannot be sure, however, that image # 2 (above) did not in any way influence image # 3:

So, where does that leave us? Well, first of all, the elephant's tail has moved to the center and then swung back to the left again across these three images. Also, the elephant appears to have been moving away from us, and continues to do so. Also also, across depictions, the elephant's posterior has grown less cartoonish, and much more....wrinkly. Finally, somewhere along the way, the whole thing became partisan. Read into all of this what you will. I, for one, feel like I've learned something.