Newsflash: Malkin Full of Shit on Stamps

Very useful article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by the excellent Dennis Roddy, debunking the myth that the Post Office has permanently discontinued religious stamps for Christmas.

The annual brouhaha over whether it's Christmas or "the holidays" spilled over into the U.S. Postal Service this week, with the Internet and public conversation awash with horror that no new religiously themed stamp was printed for the 2005 season.

[...]

But patrons looking for a new religiously themed stamp this year are getting leftover Madonna printings from last year, touching off a wave of reports that the Postal Service was planning to discontinue religiously themed Christmas stamps.

"It's absolutely not true," said Diana Svoboda, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh district. Next year's printing will include a new Madonna and the price stamped over her left shoulder will explain why a new one wasn't printed this year: Rates are going up to 39 cents per letter Jan. 8.

[...]

The time being the cyber era, and the culture being skittish, the theory of the vanishing Christmas stamp has taken deep root in the American imagination, alongside complaints about school pageants with new words to "Silent Night," possibly sung under a "unity tree." A story similar to Rev. Murphy's can be found on various Web sites.

One, called "Darleen's Place," carried a vivid account on Nov. 24 in which the author's mother asks for the Madonna stamps, and the clerk pulls out the previous year's issue and tells her, "These are all I have and they'll be the last you ever see."

"Mom asks, 'What do you mean?' He explains the USPS will not be issuing any more 'religious' stamps."

The encounter also has the clerk informing Darleen's mom that he is not permitted to say "Merry Christmas." Darleen did not respond to an e-mail requesting more details.

A similar story turned up on a Web site run by right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin. A reader there reported calling the postal service's public line and being told that religiously themed stamps were being discontinued "to avoid any legal constitutional issues."

As they say, Read the whole thing.