So, did you ever do something at work and think, "man, I really screwed up this time and everyone in the company is going to know about it."

What if that messup was not just at a company level, but at a NATIONAL level.

My favorite story this week comes from the United States Postal Service.  It was discovered last week that the image they have been using for their LADY LIBERTY stamp was not actually THAT Lady Liberty, but the one that appears outside the New York, New York Casino in Las Vegas.This stamp was issued on December 1, 2010.  Apparently, the guys at the USPS, not having the government resources to have a photographer (who can blame them in this era of bad economy), went to the Getty Images website and bought a pretty, pretty picture of the lady.

Well, let me tell you.  I am not offended by this at ALL.  In fact, this seems to be AMERICA to me.

We are a land of new.  We are a land of flux, change and reinvention.  How better to exemplify that than putting the Vegas version of Lady Liberty?

Although I am a complete Anglophile and want to have that enormous heritage and documented history of Europe, Africa and Asia. . . it just ain't gonna happen.

Even owing we DO have an amazing national identity that goes back thousands of year, that identity is not shared by all. . . in fact, as a country of almost all interlopers (read:  not the American Indians), our nation's identity as a whole seems to begin with 'ole Columbus.  And, in those terms, we are are BABIES in a historical perspective.

So, although we're still down with the French and their gift of the Lady Liberty, we have no qualms with using the Vegas Lady Liberty, too, as a symbol of the United States.

What other country could you have a place as new, flashy and inventive as Vegas?  A place that appeared 130 years ago and has grown into mythological proportions.  This is America.  We're not really old, but we're really cool.  And we can honor all parts of that. . . stamps and otherwise.

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