Fuck It, Let's Put Kim Kardashian on the $20 Bill.
LatestDuring a speech this week, President Obama recalled a letter he got from a little girl who wondered why all American paper money features men. The Commander-In-Chief offered tepid support for the little girl’s notion that maybe it’s time our wallets stop being such a sausagefest, and everyone applauded appreciatively. And thus the race to pick the perfect female theoretical bill subject commenced.
Months ago, over at Slate, Jillian Keenan noted that the best paper money candidate for a new face is the $20, which currently features the visage of former President Andrew Jackson, a genocidal maniac whose accomplishments include masterminding the murder of thousands of Native Americans in an attempt to steal their property so that more land could be freed up for use in the production of cotton and tobacco. In other words, he engineered the Trail of Tears because he wanted there to be more room for slavery. He’s a human historical double play of evil. Keenan convincingly argues that regardless of the inspiring aspects of Jackson’s backstory, the man essentially picked himself up by the bootstraps and then used those bootstraps to strangle the Choctaw, and that continuing to honor him by putting him on our money is an incredible faux pas.
If Jackson’s on the chopping block (he’s not really, but for the sake of this fun August Friday thought experiment, let’s pretend that he is), what woman should replace him? The Los Angeles Times throws it out to readers after offering that maybe Sacajawea would be a good choice. New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer suggests Harriet Tubman, Oprah, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hillary Clinton, and Rosa Parks, and even offers handy mockups of what the bills would look like. All of these women deserve to be honored for their contributions to American history. But maybe whoever replaces Jackson on the $20 bill should, like Jackson, serve as more of a reminder than an honor.