(Dec. 14) Even postage stamps have succumbed to woke identity politics.
I walked into the post office this month to get multiple rolls of stamps for Christmas cards and for months to come. The first options offered by the clerk were particularly unattractive stamps featuring flowers — who knew flowers could be unattractive? — so I asked for basic American flags instead. Alas, said the clerk, for some reason their “system” would “not process” the American flag stamps.
“But we have John Lewis,” he said.
Now I revere the late civil rights leader and congressman so much that, although his political ideology differs substantially from mine, when I once saw him in the Atlanta airport I made a point of walking up and thanking him for his service. But I didn’t want a politician on stamps for Christmas cards, so I asked what else was available.
Well, there are Kwanzaa stamps. Well, I’m all for Kujichagulia, but not for Christmas. OK, how about late, lefty Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? By now I was getting the picture. No American flags, but lots of left-wing icons and causes.
Sure enough, look at the post office’s website. Almost all the first-listed stamps, other than those featuring neutral images such as flowers, are tributes to trendy “identities” or to causes or people beloved by wokesters. Pinatas (Latino). Chief Standing Bear (indigenous). Illustrator Tomie dePaola (gay). Artist Roy Lichtenstein (avant-garde and flagrantly adulterous). Writer Toni Morrison (black). Women’s soccer (hates the anthem). Writer Ernest Gaines (black). Women cryptologists of World War II (women). Singer Pete Seeger (member of the Communist Party). Mariachi (Chicano).
Of course, some of these are well worth celebrating in their own rights. The worldview bias, though, is obvious. The fetishism of supposedly “othered” groups and causes runs rampant.
Well, as for me, I had gone into the post office wanting a basic, neutral American flag or some such, not a political statement. But as I kept declining each woke offering, my desire for neutrality abated. Finally the clerk offered me a stamp design created a full 17 months ago.
Quite hesitantly, he asked: “Nancy Reagan?”
I bought every last one in his drawer.
[That IS the full column above. The original ran here.]
