Harry Potter has millions of fans. Benjamin F. Bailar is not one of them. The 80-year-old former postmaster general and avid stamp collector sent a letter last month to Patrick Donahoe, the current postmaster general, berating the United States Postal Service for including the boy wizard on its postage stamps.
“The stamp program should celebrate the things that are great about the United States and serve as a medium to communicate those things to a world-wide audience,” Bailar wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Linns Stamp News and The Washington Post. “To prostitute that goal in the pursuit of possibly illusory profits does not make sense to me.”
Bailar expressed frustration that the Citizens’ Advisory Stamp Committee (CSAS) was not consulted about the Harry Potter decision. Bailar, who resigned as a member of the exclusive committee July 23, argues that the post office has “become heavily weighted to artists and designers with fewer and fewer people who can truly provide solid input on the subject matter of stamps.”
“While this may support a drive to ‘sell the product’ with abundance of pretty and popular culture subjects, the result is a program that lacks gravitas,” he added. “Given the apparent desire of USPS to commercialize the stamp program, I would suggest that the committee be eliminated, or at the very least be further marginalized.”
The Harry Potter stamps, based on the best-selling books by J.K. Rowling, debuted in 2013. More than $100 million of these stamps have been sold.
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A USPS spokesperson provided this response to Yahoo Finance:
“The Postal Service will discuss the concerns Mr. Bailar raised in his letter with our CSAC Chair, Janet Klug, and the full CSAC committee. The Postmaster General and CSAC members wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Bailar that the stamp program should celebrate the things that are great about the United States and serve as a medium to communicate those things to a world-wide audience."
The CSAS has been evaluating all stamp proposals since 1957. Committee members are appointed by the postmaster general and meet every quarter to review potential stamp subjects. The committee recommends an average of 25 to 30 subjects each year based on 11 criteria and the postmaster general chooses the winners.
The Postal Service released its new Janis Joplin stamp Friday, the fifth in the Postal Service’s Music Icons series. Over the years U.S. stamps have celebrated cultural American icons such as Harvey Milk, Jimi Hendrix and Charlton Heston and American pastimes such as farmers markets and Hot Rods.