The New Deacon Icon
Regular readers may recall that for more than a year, Deacon used Wake Forest's Demon Deacon as his icon in the "about us" section on the left. Unfortunately, we got a letter from a lawyer at Wake Forest demanding that we cease using their Demon. Discretion being the better part of valor, we looked for a new symbol. Several readers provided helpful suggestions; Deacon's being Jewish, however, rendered the most obvious imagery somewhat inappropriate. We considered some kind of Deacon Jones symbol--the nickname was actually based, many years ago, on our colleague's physical resemblance to the football star--but thought that getting into copyright trouble with Deacon Jones would be even worse than incurring the wrath of Wake Forest. We settled, temporarily, at least, on a bronze triangle that said "Deacon" (almost illegibly) along the bottom--an icon that one reader described as "inscrutable."
Deacon's cousin's wife--I assume this is the conservative cousin in New York whom Deacon sometimes quotes--took matters into her own hands and designed a new icon, which I got today from Deacon in the mail. I think it captures Deacon's scholarly but hard-hitting persona perfectly. Just as the Trunk's image captures...well, we won't go there. The Deacon, its creator notes, is wearing a "conservative collar." The new icon has now been installed, and our search is over. Here is the icon in slightly enlarged form, to give our readers a better look:
