‘Dead’ No Longer a Requirement to be on US Postage Stamp

Tiger Woods and Lady Gaga are now eligible to be depicted on a stamp. (Although not together.)

As the US Post Office considers options such as eliminating Saturday delivery, and even closing facilities such as Flint's downtown branch, it's taking measures to hopefully engage young people with snail mail. The USPS announced yesterday it plans to toss out the rule that stamps only honor dead people.

Some call the move desperate - and I find it ironic that the agency severely hurt by electronic communication - is taking to Facebook and Twitter to search for suggestions for its living-legend stamps.

Who would you suggest the Post Office immortalize on postage stamps? I'd vote yes for Lady Gaga; no for Tiger Woods.

A few other suggestions that have popped up numerous times on the USPS's social media sites:

• Oprah Winfrey
• Robert Redford
• Charlie Sheen (Seriously?)
• George Clooney
• Betty White
• Mary Tyler Moore
• Bill Gates

“Having really nice, relevant, interesting, fun stamps might make a difference in people’s decisions to mail a letter,” said Stephen Kearney, the Postal Service’s manager of stamp services. “This is such a sea change.”

Mr. Kearney said that while the Postal Service is enjoying perusing the responses, its choice would not depend on such polls to pick the first living honorees. Its Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee will sift through the suggestions and make a recommendation to the postmaster general, who will make the final decision.

[NY Times]