Lick It And Stick It

The other night I was sitting around and watching some tape-delayed Olympic coverage, specifically the lady's gymnastic vault. At one point the commentators mentioned the wide range of ages in the competition, noting they went from 16 to 37. Obviously, it was that second number which caused me to perk up. I mean, 37 may not be old by normal, human standards but it is considered old in several sports and downright ancient in the world of gymnastics. Oksana Chusovitina of Germany had been competing in the Olympics since the 1992 Barcelona Games, meaning she had been at this for as long as some of her competitors had been alive. (It made her 5th place finish all the more impressive.) While waiting for her to take her second attempt the color commentators were throwing out all the random facts the interns in charge of research were able to find and among them was the nugget that Chusovitina had previously had a stamp released in her honor in her native Uzbekistan. (Chusovitina is a bit of a gymnastic nomad, have previously competed for Uzbekistan and Russia under the banner of the "Unified Team".) I have to say this filled me with a tremendous sense of camaraderie with the people of Uzbekistan, because I thought our country was the only one who wasted time making stamps of people.

If you think about it, in this day and age getting your own stamp is no longer the best way to celebrate a person's life or their achievements. "What's that? You're going to honor me by creating a one inch by one inch sticky picture that most people are going to attach to bills, which means I will be a reminder of how absurd their credit card interest rate is? And the entire time they look at me they will be complaining how this is the one company which doesn't allow them pay online? Plus, you say this honor goes hand-in-hand with the United States Postal Service, which only gets mentioned on the news when it is about to have massive layoffs and potential service cuts? Doesn't sound like much of an honor to me. What's that? I shouldn't worry about it because the only people who will even notice outside my family are creepy stamp collectors, which is a hobby that bird watchers think is boring? Well, with all due respect, I think I will pass." I feel like this is one of those things which was a huge deal when it was first being done but now the prestige of it has faded away as people find alternative ways to send packages and letters. Honestly, it is a little like getting a billboard with your face on it. Sure, it works, but it just doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

Part of the reason getting your own stamp doesn't feel very important is that it appears we have flooded the market. Look at the list of people who have been given a commemorative stamp. (And that is just the US. Apparently, not only can you get your own stamp in foreign countries, their standards are just as low as ours. Who knew?) The first thing I noticed was that the list is long and the second thing is that it is kind of all over the place. I'm not going to pick out one name versus another in terms of questioning who should have gotten their own stamp (I'll leave that for you to do on your own, as there are plenty of obscure selections to pick from). I'm just saying it doesn't appear you have to be widely-famous to get one. Apparently, there is a committee which meets every year and debates over 50,000 requests. They claim that it is very hard to get your own stamp, but the evidence would beg to differ. In some ways it reminds me of getting your own star on Hollywood's "Walk of Fame". Sure, someone else has to nominate you, but the thing which is really going to push you over the edge is being willing to pay for the instillation and upkeep yourself. Of course, the fact that you can make a stamps with any picture you want through about a dozen websites probably doesn't help the prestige level of the commemorative stamp, either. Any act of Congress which can be duplicated through pressing a few buttons in the comfort of your own home doesn't exactly inspire jealousy throughout the land.

This is the problem we face thanks to the internet - things which seemed like a big deal just 10 or 20 years ago now feel terribly outdated. Clearly going forward standards are going to have to change if they want to keep up. They say the only real qualification to get a stamp is that the person must be deceased - after that it is up to the committee to decide how much cultural impact you had. I'm going to contend it may be time to bend that rule, because celebrity status moves way too fast these days. People just don't have the long careers they used to, so if you want people to buy stamps they have to feature someone who is very hot at the moment. It would be in their best interest anyway. The Postal Service makes a lot of money through celebrity stamps, because people buy them and then don't use them. How many teeny-boppers would make their parents drive them to the post office to get a Justin Bieber stamp? Enough to cover printing costs, I can guarantee that. Not to mention that I'm sure a lot of these stars have egos and wouldn't want to be associated with a poor-selling stamp. They may buy a few sheets just to grease the numbers. (Who cares as long as the Post Office turns a profit, right?) I'm not sure if that will solve all of the USPS's problems, I just know that if they don't do something stamps are going to be collector's items the same way records are, regardless of who is on them.