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: