Stamp Censorship
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This year marks an especially meaningful 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in July. During its bicentennial year, France will be celebrating the birth of the Republic, while the U.S. post office will commemorate the French Revolution with a bicentennial stamp reproducing the famous Delacroix painting “Freedom Guiding the People.” Amid a battlefield, a woman representing freedom walks topless carrying the flag. Thus, it is the motto of the French Revolution, a freedom bare to the world.
Much too offensive and imprudent for the American post office, this symbol of freedom will be covered up as if to say “no indecent exposure.”
This, of course, denies the real significance of the Revolution liberte, egalite, fraternite . What ever happened to our freedom of expression?
CATHERINE MICALLEF
Los Angeles
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