No Longer Have To Be Dead To Get On A Stamp

The United States Post office has decided to let live people be shown
on stamps. This is thrilling.http://goscf.com/t/33664

Apparently they nearly did, my bad, sorry.



*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Link to story please?

News to me. I just told somebody the exact opposite!

Jack Kelley

Is this how fake news gets started ?

Peter

The USPS has in fact issued stamps featuring living actors as depictions of their roles. A great example of this is the Harry Potter booklet, where the actors aren't even Americans!

I will end this again with the same statement!
Living people have been depicted on US stamps, but never featured!
Example the 9/11 semi postal or Iwo Jima flag raising, but the event was the focus not the people!

The widely-accepted tradition, "rule" if you prefer, is not to honor someone on a stamp until they've passed away. That's because we don't want to honor someone until we're sure they're worth honoring. We want to be sure someone doesn't get a stamp and then do something awful later so we regret the honor. Even presidents don't get a stamp until they pass away.

(Depicting living people on stamps without honoring them isn't unusual since the stamp is not about them and sometimes that's unavoidable.)

It's not a law, but an American tradition most people see as a good idea. If you look at other countries' stamps (and you might just have done that a few times!), you'll see over and over, stamps issued for a living person, usually the nation's leader that might have been regretted later. Besides Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Castro, Franco, and others, many other people honored on stamps might not have been given a stamp if the authorities had waited for the judgement of history. Evita Peron comes to mind, athletes who were later found to be taking illegal drugs, famous people later convicted of crimes, and so on.

This American tradition is in contrast to the way monarchies hand out titles and medals all the time. The U.S. Constitution prohibits American office-holders from accepting foreign honors or gifts: "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." We have a long history of not using titles ("Sir," etc). Not honoring a living person on a stamp may be related to this traditional reluctance to honor someone without waiting "just to be sure". Let monarchies and dictatorships do that, but not us.

And it's worked well for us. Sorting through piles of stamps from countries that don't have much self-control. you really wonder sometimes why that person had a stamp issued for them. I'm very glad we exercise some amount of self-control by waiting before we honor someone on a stamp.

***Enough of the political posts. Last Warning***

The one that's so interesting to me (and an early example)! Is the C10 Lindbergh issue. He's not technically pictured on the stamp, but his name is there in great big bold type, and it was certainly issued to honor his achievement.

Matt

John Fremont was depicted and featured on the 5c Trans-Mississippi stamp in 1898. He died in 1900.

According to Wikipedia John Charles Fremont died July 1, 1890.

Peter

You are right Peter. Looks like I made a mistake.