Sunday, April 17, 2011

Long may she wave

I'm sure you must have read that the image of Lady Liberty on the recent stamp is not of the statue in New York Harbor but of the replica at Las Vegas' New York, New York. An innocent mistake at the Postal Service, apparently. But, wow!

It's really unnecessary to comment. I'll just observe that it may be time to think of canonizing Jean Baudrillard: this shows agency from beyond the grave. And that it has an Ozymandias element. It's a "Forever Stamp," a symptom of this culture's inability to think seriously about the future even as it forecloses it.