Ami Magazine draws on an old tradition?

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The current issue of Ami Magazine has as striking image illustrating the cover story, "Orthodox Community Under Attack By The Press," depicting a young Chareidi man in stocks.



































I thought it might be interesting to discuss the Kuna a little bit, the stocks which were often found outside Polish and Lithuanian synagogues (and Churches). Wrongdoers were places in the kuna, and sometimes people were enjoined to spit at them during the period they were confined. People could be placed in it for things ranging to financial misconduct (such as defaulting on loans) to religious misconduct, as well as things like theft.
Here is an image of the actual kuna which was used in/ by the main synagogue in Vilna during the time that - allegedly - Salomon Maimon was placed in it on orders of the Vilna Gaon for saying that the Talmudic Sages erred in giving ditza as a Hebrew synonym for "joy." The story about that story is complex; the second edition of Aliyos Eliyahu (where the story is related) acknowledged that Salomon Maimon, given as the  protagonist in the first edition, could not have been the hapless prisoner, but that it was the mysterious Glusker Maggid (aka Abba, Maggid of Hlesk) who is famed in legend elsewhere as the man whom Rabbi Yaakov Emden throw down a flight of stairs, composing a Hebrew poem as he fell. 






































And here is a depiction of a man confined in a kuna, printed in Tausent Jahr Pinsk (New York 1941) by Benzion Hoffmann (from here).




































And one from the synagogue in Przysucha (i.e., Peshischa):