Pacific Views

Irony or hypocrisy?

We went to the post office to get stamps yesterday and found that the postal service had issued a commemorative honoring Paul Robeson, an African American singer and political activist who was hounded out of the US because of his leftist politics. Given how the government of the US treated Robeson — and the politics of the current administration in Washington — it seemed rather strange to find Robeson's face staring back at us from a US stamp.

We were going to write something about the contradictions inherent in the Paul Robeson stamp, but we find that William Jelani Cobb has already sorted those contradictions out in a column about the Robeson stamp at Africana.

With a sitting President who tells the world, "you are either with us or against us," endorses secret military tribunals, and condones eavesdropping on confidential discussions between a person and his or her attorney, it's almost impossible to ask whether the Robeson stamp is tribute or hypocrisy. These days, presidents visit Martin Luther King's tomb — before appointing former segregationists to the federal bench. And a defamed icon is given accolades a half-century after his life was ruined by an overzealous government that had declared Communism its primary threat and told him that he was either with us or against us. With history as an alibi, you can't expect anyone to plead guilty.

Via rabble.