I note that the Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, announced on the 20th of April that Harriet Tubman has been chosen to be the first woman to adorn a piece of US folding money since Martha Washington in the 19th Century. In making this decision, Lew back peddled from his previous plan to kick Alexander Hamilton off the Ten Dollar bill (after reported protests from the public) and has chosen, instead, to supplant Andy Jackson on the $20. Perhaps Jackson does not have a fan base as extensive as Hamilton's. He certainly does not have a Broadway play named after him where he is portrayed by a Puerto Rican and Aaron Burr is a black guy---another clear case of what is politically in vogue trumping historical accuracy. So, the "Hero of New Orleans" will be relegated to the back of the bill in what I suspect is an attempt to, figuratively, make him sit in the back of the bus. But the effort will not stop with the changes to the $20. While Hamilton will stay on the front of the $10 and Abe Lincoln with continue to hold his place on the $5, the backs of these bills will now include images of other women like Eleanor Roosevelt, Marion Anderson and Susan B. Anthony (who,having failed at being a coin, obviously deserves a second chance) and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King. These moves are fully in keeping with Mr. Lew's apparent wish to right all historic wrongs and to continually make the point that some groups have been slighted in their treatment or lack thereof by writers of non-revisionist history books. I particularly think that in the Andrew Jackson-Harriet Tubman juxtaposition, he (Lew) appreciates the symbolic irony of a slave holder in the" back of the bus" while a former slave occupies the front.
But what I am REALLY irritated about is that Mr. Lew obviously ignored the points made in my June 2015 post on this blog site which suggested an entirely reasonable solution to the "Let's put a woman on the paper currency" problem. My idea was to leave all the current bills with their historic portraits alone and to commission a new bill (in the amount of Three Dollars) featuring Caitlyn Jennner. That would have scratched everybody's itch and satisfied a multitude of minorities and the self-perceived down trodden.
This would have been the perfect answer had Mr. Lew opted to ask me----BUT NO! He couldn't be bothered--- so he will have to be content with being judged by history as an advocate for rotten decisions. Perhaps we should put his profile on a coin.
But what I am REALLY irritated about is that Mr. Lew obviously ignored the points made in my June 2015 post on this blog site which suggested an entirely reasonable solution to the "Let's put a woman on the paper currency" problem. My idea was to leave all the current bills with their historic portraits alone and to commission a new bill (in the amount of Three Dollars) featuring Caitlyn Jennner. That would have scratched everybody's itch and satisfied a multitude of minorities and the self-perceived down trodden.
This would have been the perfect answer had Mr. Lew opted to ask me----BUT NO! He couldn't be bothered--- so he will have to be content with being judged by history as an advocate for rotten decisions. Perhaps we should put his profile on a coin.