We Deliver For Allah
USPS…Or Is It USPC?
February 17, 2003
A few days ago, one of my readers sent me an email inquiring about the relevancy of the United States Postal Service’s EID stamp. As a philatelically challenged individual, I have little interest in stamps beyond their ever-increasing cost. If the reader had asked for an opinion about the USPS’s proclivity for inefficiency, bad customer service or burning taxpayer dollars I might have been more useful. Without a thought in my head about the EID, I responded that I would look into it and get back. The only place I was getting back to was the local post office.
Coincidently, I involuntarily had to subject myself to USPS customer service that very day. An overseas canine friend of mine has recently given birth to a new litter (litter is such a politically incorrect term for the product of a birthing bitch) and I had to ship her a package of celebratory puppy treats. As I filled out my declaratory customs form while lingering in a meandering line akin to a retreating Iraqi on the Highway of Death, I noticed a holiday stamp poster behind the body of the only visible postal clerk who couldn’t decide if he should wait on the next customer or take a break at rush hour.
Eureka, I could mail my doggy treats and do some EID stamp recon work. In an age of e-mail and e-stamps, the contemporary boutiquish nature of the post office had previously escaped my purview. My excitement started to build at the thought of buying some Easter stamps and impressing the hell out of my friends with a bit of retro snail mail. But wait…there, on the USPS holiday poster, was a Holiday Gossaert (spelled Christmas) stamp, a Kwanzaa stamp, a Hanukkah stamp, a Lunar New Year (spelled Chinese New Year) stamp and the elusive EID stamp. Oh pooh, the holiday poster portrayed no Easter stamp.
In lieu of interrogating my Newmanesque postal clerk, the most direct path to an Easter stamp would surely be the USPS website. After returning to my office from the front, I popped onto www.usps.com. Oh, double pooh, there is no Easter stamp. But there sure as hell is an EID stamp and even a stamp commemorating the raising of the flag at the post 9/11 site, formerly known as the World Trade Center. In a vain search for an Easter or religious stamp at the USPS website, I stumbled across what I am sure is a highly classified government document, “The USPS Citizen’s Stamp Advisory Committee” report.
Ahh, there was my answer. Criteria number 9 of the “12 major areas now guiding subject selection” emphatically states that, “Stamps or stationery items shall not be issued to honor religious institutions or individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings or beliefs.” That must be why the Christmas stamp is called the Holiday Gossaert. If it was called a “Christmas” stamp, that would be a no-no. But what about the other holiday stamps?
A recent Ann Coulter column attests that Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday. In fact, “Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga.” And since it is the stated goal of the USPS to portray “the American experience to a world audience through the issuance of postage stamps and postal stationery,” I guess it is appropriate to celebrate Kwanzaa which is itself, “…a lunatic blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism.”
We all know that Chanukah or Hanukkah is a Jewish religious holiday. Holidays on the Net explains that “Jews celebrate Chanukah to mark the victory over the Syrians and the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple.” The Memphis City Schools (TN) district has a very thorough reference website exploring this holiday if you wish to know more. Doesn’t the USPS know that, without reasonable doubt, this is a religious holiday and, therefore, its Hanukkah stamp is in conflict with USPS guidelines?
The Lunar New Year stamp is a punt. Word has it that a monster kept ravaging a Chinese village and through a mixture of firecrackers, drums, gongs and a prodigiousness of the color red the monster was scared away. The holiday seems to be based on superstition, which by definition might or might not be religious. An atheist would have you believe that the resurrection of Christ is mere superstition whereas an ancient Egyptian knows that a black cat is of religious significance.
And now…the protagonist of the story, the EID stamp. EID is a combination of two Muslim religious (is that an oxymoron?) holidays. Eid-ul-Fitr celebrates the end of Ramadan and Eid-ul-Adha is “the celebration of sacrifice.” Eid-ul-Adha revolves around Allah sparing a life, “Allah asked Ibrahim to sacrifice his own son Ishmael, and Ibrahim didn't even once think ‘why’ or that he might say ‘no’ - if that's what Allah wanted, he trusted Him no matter what!” Unfortunately for Ishmael, Allah spared him and he would have to wait for his 77 virgins. Hey, Mr. PostmasterPerson, EID is a religious holiday and I’m not getting the meaning of, “Stamps or stationery items shall not be issued to honor religious institutions or individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings or beliefs.”
In the world before Doublespeak, it would appear that the USPS has a problem. How do you reconcile the prohibition against honoring religious institutions or individuals with the reality of issuing stamps for religious holidays? And why, does the United States Postal Service issue a stamp honoring an act of sacrifice that serves as an object lesson for future suicide bombers when it neither honors nor acknowledges Easter or Purim?
One could hope for a quid pro quo, but…. A thorough Google search of the Internet has failed to capture one instance of an Easter stamp issued by an Islamic nation. Even more ridiculous are the overwhelming results of that Google search; “USPS issues EID stamp since stamps commemorate Christmas and Hanukkah.” Not even the New York Times-certified secular nation of Iraq issues a single Christian stamp. They do, however, have some very nice issues commemorating Saddam Hussein’s birthday.
Let’s face it; 56 men who firmly believed in the Judeo-Christian ethic signed the Declaration of Independence. More to the point, Matthew Spalding, Ph.D. asserts that, “There are four references to God in the document: to ‘the laws of nature and nature's God’; to all men being ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights’; to ‘the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions’; and to ‘the protection of Divine Providence’.”
Oh my God, America was founded on ideas with Judeo-Christian roots. Based on this, the USPS, if it was true to paragraph 9 of its own guidelines, would neither issue stamps that honored America or any of it’s institutions. Additionally, the USPS should disassociate itself completely from the U.S. government. Hey Newman…give up the red, white and blue.
Like all the other PC Doublespeak in this country, the USPS voices its own brand of hypocrisy. In 1995 the USPS announced it would discontinue the Christmas stamp until a public outcry forced Bill Clinton, who probably thought the “Madonna and Child” stamp was an MTV video, to pressure Postmaster General Marvin Runyon into a reversal of this nonsensical decision. Yet, within weeks of 9/11, formerly known as the World Trade Center, the USPS issues the EID stamp and continues its promotion while ignoring its own criteria number 1 that stamps, “will feature American or American-related subjects.” Go tell Hallmark that Eid-ul-Adha is more American than Easter.
It’s a testament to Prozac that a nation, which owes its very existence to the belief in Judeo-Christian morals, can produce institutions, like the USPS, which work overtime to deny and bastardize those very same beliefs in the name of secularization. It is cultural cannibalization on the table of bureaucratic nitwits.
I am certain that our military personnel in the Gulf region will be teary-eyed with nostalgia over the USPS’s policy of inclusion as evidenced by the cancelled EID stamps on the Easter cards from their families back home.
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