I love Christmas…just so you know. And no, I’m not on drugs, this being just past the start of Spring. But it occurred to me today that we are becoming a Santa Claus nation. Let me explain.
It all started when I read that the U.S. Post Office had just issued a stamp that depicts the Statue of Liberty. The story indicated that the picture of the Statue of Liberty was not actually the real one, but rather a photo of the Statue of LIberty in Las Vegas! Of course, when I read the article, I assumed that this mistake would make the stamp valuable, and that the real Statue would quickly replace the fake one. But….
The United States Postal Service admitted the mistake but said it planned to stick with its Lady Liberty “Forever” stamp. “We still love the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway,” Roy Betts, a post office spokesman, told the Times.
Really? While I happen to love the movie “Miracle on 34th Street”, and am delighted each time I watch it, I’m no longer 6 years old, and (spoiler alert) understand the difference between Christmas and Santa Claus. Can’t wait for December? Want a reminder?
The difference between Christmas and Santa Claus just doesn’t seem to have been clarified to our government, the Post Office for example, does it? What we’re now going to get is a depicture of a depicture. A replica of the real thing. They’re giving us Santa Claus. I want Christmas.
This is really a post about government in general, of course, NAR specifically, and an awful lot of the world we’ve colorized in attempt to feed the masses chaff instead of grain. I’m a man who was once a boy, working in a profession run by boys who never act like men, in a country where our government now openly promotes imitation over the real deal. If you’re on the street today showing homes, and if you come upon an old woman with wrinkles, look away. Somewhere there’s a Photoshopped Gravatar of her that I’m sure will be better than the real thing. Seems that there really IS a Santa Claus, Virginia…
Jim Klein says:
> Somewhere there’s a Photoshopped Gravatar of her that I’m sure will be better than the real thing.
Classic line, Don! This is why I gripe about philosophers—they could spend 100 days and a million dollars explaining why it might be the photo that’s the real thing.
Never mind that most of the real things don’t know themselves that they’re real things! Nice job.
April 15, 2011 — 11:15 am
Lani at AgentGenius says:
This reminds me of Magritte’s famous painting, The Treachery of Images…
ceci n’est pas une pipe: http://randomknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/magrittepipe.jpg
Love this!
April 15, 2011 — 1:04 pm
David says:
The best thing we can do is to understand the stamp as a symbol of liberty as such without arguing about which picture would represent it better. Moreover, the majority of visitors who come to the US automatically associate freedom with the real statue.
April 16, 2011 — 11:46 am
Teri Lussier says:
>I’m a man who was once a boy, working in a profession run by boys who never act like men
Amen.
April 16, 2011 — 3:59 pm
Thomas A B Johnson says:
Don Reedy is.
April 16, 2011 — 7:02 pm
Carmen Brodeur says:
You have got to be kidding me! This is the first I have heard of this. What a sham. I can’t believe the post office is sticking with a photo of a replica…in Vegas no less.
April 16, 2011 — 7:21 pm