PEOPLE MAG: Maya Angelou Memorial Stamp Features Quote from a Different Author

A stamp commemorating author and poet Maya Angelou was unveiled Tuesday morning in Washington D.C. And while the ceremony featured addresses by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, a matter not addressed at the ceremony was the apparent misattribution of the quote on the "Forever" stamp.

Next to a photo of Angelou reads the text, "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

Those words may recall the title of Angelou's 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, but they were actually written by Joan Walsh Anglund, 89, in the 1967 book A Cup of Sun, according to the Washington Post.

Living in New York around 2005, I once saw a flyer advertising Maya Angelou's appearance before NYU students that had exactly the same "bird" quote. The flyer was posted at the entrance to one of the left-wing churches around NYU that lends its space to events held by communists and other progressives, including a party to celebrate the release of Lynn Stewart from prison, which I attended undercover with a video camera.

At the time I thought it was a fairly good line coming from a poet, but coming from a prog it leaps into a completely different paradigm. I rephrased it in my head to say, "A prog doesn't talk because he/she/it has an answer, a prog talks because he/she/it has a Party-approved narrative."

It so happened that I was on my way to give a speech to the NYU Young Republicans Club about the People's Cube, so I started my speech by talking about Maya Angelou's flyer I had passed a few doors down the block. I gave them my translation from the prog language - how it would have sounded if Maya Angelou were high on truth serum. This is why I still remember this line almost ten years later.

Most importantly, Maya Angelou was still alive and well then; she must have seen and approved of the flyer with the "fake" quote, or her agent did. That means the line had been attributed to her for many years, she knew about it, and did nothing to stop it.

Putting the quote on a stamp wasn't simply an error on the part of the Postal Service. It has become a logical extension of her disingenuous legacy as a mediocre poet who was promoted and celebrated due to her politics and who is mostly remembered by one line that wasn't even hers.

The symbolic falseness of the stamp makes an appropriate monument to such a legacy - one of the many insignificant and unsightly monuments to progdom in arts that are littering America's artistic graveyard, with the exception that Michelle Obama's and Oprah Winfrey's participation in its unveiling take this symbolism to a whole new level.

Indeed, Maya Angelou was truly the Barack Obama of poetry and she knew it.
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Let's help the Postal Service in creating a replacement stamp with a different quote. Correct wording, attribution, and spelling are optional.

Mrs. Red Square just reminded me that she liked Maya Angelou's aforementioned book of poems titled "I Know Why The KGB Sings."

Many misattribute the Gettysburg Address to an old ugly white guy. The truth is probably that he had his slaves write it for him. Had the opportunity presented itself, Maya Angelou WOULD have said something very similar, were it not that she was a member of an oppressed minority class.

Wasn't she the one who stated she was going to "fundamentally transform Amerikkka" ?

"War is deception." Maya Angelou

At the Karl Marx Treatment Center our birds don't sing because they can answer anything and we don't hold them because they have any answers. At the Karl Marx Treatment Center the bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings to end the pain.

After awhile they start singing as soon as they see me coming. It's quite beautiful.

I understand she did TV commercials too.

I happened to be at the Post Office today and asked them about the Angelou stamps. The guy was happy to go to the back and bring me a sheet. "Just received them today," he said.

Here it is, on my keyboard, next to the post about her on the screen. And yes, the background is gloriously red, too!

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Red Square... be sure to save the plate block!
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Is okay, nothing is ever false if the falsehood can be corrected by the State to be true.

Pamalinsky wrote:

33927-PROGGY SLOGAN copy.jpg

Comrade Pamalinsky, revelation of highly classified state secrets is punishable by death, followed by sentencing and a widely publicized show trial. Make preparations.

There is no room in The Party™ for unapproved levity or hilarity, regardless of how hilarious such hilarity may be.

While Pamalinskis' hilarity and cleverness are noted, like the man said, we in the federal gummint do not have a sense of humor that we are aware of...

Well, Comrades AlphabetSoupNotSee, KKK, and Ivan the Stak,

I appreciate your appreciation of my post and I'm not “afeared” of the fed gub thugs.

Every now and then I come up with a “good one.” I am especially proud of this one. I don't know where it came from but, jeesh, it's almost like a haiku!

Special H/T to Kelly Ivanova for providing me with this platform. Thanks Kell!

Red Square wrote:Mrs. Red Square just reminded me that she liked Maya Angelou's aforementioned book of poems titled "I Know Why The KGB Sings."

Good one, Mrs. Red Square!

From now on I will think of the KGB as a caged bird!

This should become an entry in the urban dictionary.

That reminds me of a song, for some reason:

"I Write The Laws"

I've been alive forever
And I wrote the very first Law
I put the words and the regulations together
I am The Party™
And I write the Law

I write the Laws that make the whole world sing
I write the Laws of compliance and special things
I write the Laws that make the young girls cry
I write the Laws that write the Laws

My home lies deep within The Party™
And I've got my own spys in your soul
Now when I look out through your smartphone
I'm young again, even tho' I'm very old

I write the Laws that make the whole world sing
I write the Laws of compliance and special things
I write the Laws that make the young girls cry
I write the Laws that write the Laws

Oh, my Laws make you dance and gives you spirit to take no chance
And I wrote some regulations so you can move
Dread fills your heart, well that's a real fine place to start
It's for me, it's from you
It's from you, it's for me
It's a worldwide tyranny

I write the Laws that make the whole world sing
I write the Laws of compliance and special things
I write the Laws that make the young girls cry
I write the Laws that write the Laws

I write the Laws that make the whole world sing
I write the Laws of compliance and special things
I write the Laws that make the young girls cry
I write the Laws that write the Laws

I am The Party™ and I write the Laws

Pamalinsky wrote:Well, Comrades AlphabetSoupNotSee, KKK, and Ivan the Stak,

I appreciate your appreciation of my post and I'm not “afeared” of the fed gub thugs.

Every now and then I come up with a “good one.” I am especially proud of this one. I don't know where it came from but, jeesh, it's almost like a haiku!

Special H/T to Kelly Ivanova for providing me with this platform. Thanks Kell!

Do not mention it. It is the duty and privilege of the Ministry of Love ™ to provide aid in building the self-esteem of all comrades.

Kapitan Kangaroo Kourt wrote:That reminds me of a song, for some reason:

"I Write The Laws"

I've been alive forever
And I wrote the very first Law
I put the words and the regulations together
I am The Party™
And I write the Law

I write the Laws that make the whole world sing
I write the Laws of compliance and special things
I write the Laws that make the young girls cry
I write the Laws that write the Laws

...

That's the Boris Manilov I know!

Red Square wrote:

Kapitan Kangaroo Kourt wrote:That reminds me of a song, for some reason:

"I Write The Laws"

I've been alive forever
And I wrote the very first Law
I put the words and the regulations together
I am The Party™
And I write the Law

I write the Laws that make the whole world sing
I write the Laws of compliance and special things
I write the Laws that make the young girls cry
I write the Laws that write the Laws

...

That's the Boris Manilov I know!

Yeah, Comrade Red,

When he was a big heartthrob, his back-up singers, as well as many other singers laughed about it.

They knew something we didn't know, or didn't care about.

Barry prevailed. Bigtime.

Kelly Ivanovna/келя ивановна wrote:

Pamalinsky wrote:Well, Comrades AlphabetSoupNotSee, KKK, and Ivan the Stak,

I appreciate your appreciation of my post and I'm not “afeared” of the fed gub thugs.

Every now and then I come up with a “good one.” I am especially proud of this one. I don't know where it came from but, jeesh, it's almost like a haiku!

Special H/T to Kelly Ivanova for providing me with this platform. Thanks Kell!

Do not mention it. [highlight=#ffff00]It is the duty and privilege of the Ministry of Love ™ to provide aid in building the self-esteem of all comrades.[/highlight]

Mission accomplished, dear Kell!