The United States Postal Service has issued a new stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty. Only the statue it features is not the one in the harbor, but the replica at the New York-New York casino in Las Vegas.
You might think that the post office would have just gone with the original, the one off the tip of Lower Manhattan that for 125 years has welcomed millions of New York’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Instead, they accidentally used the 14-year-old statue that presides over thousands of weary gamblers a week.
Oh, woopsies! Is this the perfect metaphor for our times our what? Las Vegas’ ersatz Lady Liberty is just what embodies this country these days. We have fake presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin dominating our news, and fake leaders in Congress like Paul Ryan who have no interest in governing, just in destroying the very things which have made this country strong. We have a news media which goes into overdrive over non-stories while failing to report important news: like the fact that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs, and the Tea Party is an astroturf movement developed and organized by corporate interests. Our entire public debate is manipulated by special interests. Oh, and our entire economy is based on the casino-mentality of the Wall Street fraudsters.
There’s so much phony baloney going on that we can’t even tell the difference between a real beacon of Liberty presiding over New York Harbor and the faker from the Las Vegas Strip.
That just kinda says it all.
