Posted on June 29,
2015
Ten Fold
Loopy Lew dumps founder for feminism
by
Daniel
Clark
So this is what we get from a Treasury secretary who
has to learn how to write his own name as part of his on-the-job training. When Jack Lew was appointed, his signature
consisted of a lazily scribbled series of eight loops, which more closely
resembled a tragic Slinky accident than any person’s name. The only way it came anywhere near spelling a
word was if he happened to be quoting Arnold Horshack.
(“Oooo! Oooo!”)
President
Obama joked that when he saw it, “I considered rescinding my offer to appoint
him,” but then added, “Jack assures me that he is going to make at least one
letter legible in order not to debase our currency.” Lew has held up his part of the bargain, by
revising his signature so that his initials are recognizable. Anyone who took that 
to
mean he wouldn’t be vandalizing our money, however, has been mistaken.
Our current Secretary of the Treasury has decided to
remove his bureaucratic ancestor from his place of honor – partially, at least. In response to a feminist internet campaign
to put a woman on the $20 bill, Lew announced that one would appear on the ten
instead, because that’s the next denomination that’s up for a redesign. Yet an FAQ page posted by the Treasury
Department assures us that “the image of Alexander Hamilton will remain part of
the $10 note.”
It is not clear just how Lew will accomplish
that. One possibility that’s been
floated is that two different bills will be circulated, one with Hamilton’s
likeness, and one with that of a woman to be named later. Another option would be to have the woman
portrayed in the traditional manner, while Hamilton lurks in the background,
like the ghost image of Andrew Jackson that appears on the right-hand side of
the twenty when you hold it up to the light.
Perhaps they’ll even do a simple cut-and-paste job to place both figures
in a single portrait, in the tradition of The
Weekly World News.
Whatever the design, it is bound to be deemed
unsatisfactory. Making a concession to a
group of liberals never ends the story, but only leads to additional demands, as
anybody should know who has lived through the decline and fall of McDonald’s. No man who is on our currency has ever been
forced to share the spotlight, but once the government decides to include a
woman, she may not even be given top billing, so to speak. Lew may think he’s becoming a liberal hero by
honoring a woman, but to those few who are demanding it, his action will only
belittle her by suggesting she needs the presence of a man. That arrangement won’t be any more acceptable
to the activists than if he emblazoned the new bill with an image of a feminist
icon fetching Hamilton’s slippers.
Lew’s
desire to use our currency to suck up to the diversity-mongers is complicated
by the facts that there is a finite number of denominations, and our founding
fathers, as the title would once upon a time have suggested, were all men. Of course there are plenty of women who
deserve to be honored for their role American history, but not at the expense
of a giant like Hamilton, the mastermind and primary author of The Federalist Papers. Lew, in an effort to placate both sides, will
only succeed in alienating each.
How strange, that such a controversy would emerge at
this particular time, when society pretends that a man is a woman just because
he says he is. If one’s sex is now
determined subjectively, then what’s the point in replacing an image of one
person with that of another for the sake of “gender inclusiveness”? The men on our currency are no longer alive
to speak for themselves, but several of them, including Hamilton, wore
wigs. Who’s to say how they “identify”?
The subdued reaction to Lew’s announcement illustrates
an unexpected obstacle facing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Celebrating America’s first-ever female
fill-in-the-blank is so 2013. This
latest phase of the sexual revolution has ironically rendered feminism
obsolete.
These new bills won’t be issued until 2020. Between now and then, the Supreme Court may
be called upon to legally define the words “man” and “woman,” and we can take a
pretty good guess that it will not find them to be mutually exclusive. At that point, the significance of putting a
woman on the $10 bill will be as lacking in clarity as Jack Lew’s penmanship.
The Shinbone: The
Frontier of the Free Press