Rabbi Opposes Elvis Stamp

Rabbi Ben Kamin, Spiritual Life Examiner on the Examiner.com website, opines that Elvis should never have been on a postage stamp.

He points out, "Elvis Presley died ignominiously and self-abusively. He killed himself with drugs, alcohol, and indulgence. The end of his life came to be a cacophony of blind extravagance and gross irresponsibility. He was not martyred; he was stoned."

Rabbi Kamin says he was visited recently by a stamp collector who brought with him part of his collection.

"This fellow, who even carries around a special moist sponge for his stamps ('It’s so crass to lick a stamp,' he snarls), is actually a member of the American Philatelic Society. He is very disappointed in the current lack of artistic merit in US stamps, and is opposed to the self-sticking variety. He takes great pride in his anthology of cancelled samples and really possesses a pronounced sense of history and citizenship."

"But when he pulled out a commemorative first class stamp with the visage of Elvis Presley, we got into a bit of a tussle. I opposed the Elvis stamp, released by the Postal Service in 1993, although I adored Elvis and particularly admired his unabashed admiration for black-style vocalization," the Rabbi writes.

He concludes with, "In the end, the Postal Service, always poorly run, and fiscally dysfunctional, decided to run the stamp and enjoy its biggest sales of any stamp in history. Never mind the ramifications of putting the stamp of approval on an idol who surely would have never wanted any youngster to pursue the kind of self-destruction that he did."

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