Wingnutty Deliciousness

The new front in the culture war: postage stamps!

Have you looked at U.S. postage stamps recently?  They are childish, silly, and racist.  Growing up I remember that for years we would use stamps with the figures of Lincoln, FDR, Washington represented.  You'd send a letter and you could not help but be reminded of to whom we were indebted and what it was that they did. 

A 5 minute cruise of the USPS website shows that these kinds of men have been erased.  Here is the line-up as of today:

Polar bears, lots of women and blacks no one has ever heard of.  There's Julia de Burgos (who?), Mother Teresa (an Albanian saint), Oscar Micheaux (a black guy I never heard of), Kate Smith, Katharine Hepburn, Love, Pansies in a Basket, the Year of the Rabbit (Forever, a Navajo necklace, Anna Julia Cooper (a black woman I never heard of), Adopt a Shelter Pet, Butterfly, Tiffany lamps, Chinese bracelets, Kwanzaa,  Mary Lasker (who?), Richard Wright (another black guy), playing cards, balloons, daisies, cherries, all the NFL Teams, Hollywood personalities, the Simpsons, and don't forget...you guessed it...the all-important-never-thing-that-one-cannot-know-too-much-about...wait for it... Negro Baseball Leagues.

My God! There are black people Alan Fraser hasn't heard of? I am shocked, SHOCKED by this development!

Also, Richard Wright is "another black guy."

In other news, the next rise in stamp prices is clearly going to pay reparations for slavery.....

Tea Party History

So over at Pandagon, they are talking about the cover for this Tea Party magazine:

Pandagon notes the complete lack of humor in Tea Partiers. Fair enough. But I was struck by the bizarre article listed on the cover: "Paine, de Tocqueville, and Booker T. Washington." If we are playing the game of what these three men had in common, I'd go so far as to say they all spent time in the United States of America. Beyond that, I have no freaking idea.

I am completely fascinated by Tea Party versions of history. This should make an excellent book for a future historian. Jill Lepore had a piece in the NewYorker about this awhile back, focusing on their obsession with the Founding Fathers. But there's so much more. I literally cannot think of a single way you connect Booker T. Washington with the other two; moreover, I'm really scared as to what purpose they have with Washington. To call W.E.B. DuBois an Islamofascist, terrorist, and traitor? To support the Atlanta Compromise? Who the hell knows.