Saturday, April 16, 2011

Wretched refuse


The US Postal Service has inadvertently issued a stamp depicting the fibre-glass simulacrum of the Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas, rather than the original. But this hasn’t provoked the outrage one might have expected, according to the New York Times.

“Wouldn’t anything be a replica anyway?” asks firefighter Doug Jessup, demonstrating a pretty good grasp of the Baudrillardian fundamentals. “It’s still only a picture, a representation in any case.” But it’s the response of 21-year-old Alex Henes that will most depress anyone who has pored through a Stanley Gibbons catalogue. “It’s a stamp to me,” he says. “We’re not the snail-mail generation; we’re the ‘e-mail, get it out as quick as you can’ generation. If it was 50 years ago, I would take issue with it.”

PS: Mrs Peel directs to some incisive comments from Times readers.

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