Download this report as an MP3 sound file.


For broadcast on CBS Radio Network stations March 29-30, 2003:


Pride and Prejudice


The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.


Next Thursday, the U-S issues its Old Glory booklet: Five stamps showing
patriotic knickknacks. It should prove popular with the public, especially
now, but it will be hard to find at your local post office. Try a "postal
store" kiosk.


That's the pride. But the prejudice? The continuing flak about the Eid
Muslim holiday stamp. Some people can't seem to distinguish between all the
members of an ethnic group or religion, and fanatics.


Of course, it's not the first time prejudices have influenced our nation's
stamps. Paul Robeson was a star athlete, scholar, and actor, yet there's
been no stamp for him in the Black Heritage series....probably because he
was blacklisted in the Communist scare of the mid-Twentieth Century.


And any time a photograph showing a famous person holding a cigarette is
used these days as the basis for a stamp design -- such as the playwright
Thornton Wilder stamp a few years ago -- that cigarette is gone when the
stamp is issued....because smoking isn't in.


And that's stamp collecting this week. 


I'm Lloyd de Vries, CBS News. 

----------------------------------------------------------
Go to Previous Report
Go to Next Report 

Go to Report Index