Back in 2002 the American Council of the Blind sued the Treasury Department. Their complaint was that the uniform dimensions of American paper currency are a form of government-sponsored discrimination against people with less than perfect vision.
A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit swallowed this argument whole hog. By a two-to-one decision the panel found in favor of the plaintiff.
The lone dissenter to the May 2008 decision was Judge A. Raymond Randolph, who said the two-person majority had been too quick to scoff at evidence that retooling or replacing the seven million vending machines in America would cost third parties about $3.5 billion, not to mention the cost to the folks who make automatic teller machines and wallets. Then there’s the estimated $178 million for new printing presses and maybe another $50 million for new printing plates. In a previous 2006 decision, Judge James Robertson of the Federal District Court in Washington had called these last costs insignificant.
The suit had been brought under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which addresses discrimination in federal programs. The appeals-court panel held that the uniform design of American currency “appears to have been a result of the type of thoughtlessness and indifference” that the statute was intended to outlaw. Foreign governments have already tarted up their currencies with gimcracks such as bits of metal foil (the Euro), embossed dots (Canada), and textures (Sweden).
According to Brookly McLaughlin, a deputy assistant secretary for the Treasury Department’s department of public affairs, the Big T was already working “to improve the nation’s paper currency to best serve the needs of all Americans, including those who are blind or visually impaired.” Brookly added that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had already contracted with a research team to study ways to help folks with poor vision.
And then we have Barack Obama . . . At a campaign rally in Springfield, Missouri, Mister Obama did his best to pre-emptively smear John McCain as a brainless racist:
“So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills. You know, he’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.”
Huh? Obama is heaping dirt on the same John McCain who promptly dismissed radio talk-show host Bill Cunningham for uttering Mister Obama’s full name at a McCain rally in Cincinnati. Mr. Cunningham had opined that “At some point in the near future the media, the stooges from the New York Times; CBS, the Clinton Broadcasting System; NBC, the Nobody But Clinton network; the All Bill Clinton channel, ABC; and the Clinton News Network at some point is going to peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama.”
For the offense of saying Mister Obama’s middle name, Mister McCain threw Bill Cunningham under The Straight Talk Express.
Let’s take a moment to do as the straight-talking Bill Cunningham suggested and peel the bark off Barack Obama. The trash-talking Obama was really trying for a three-point rhetorical lay-up. In a single flourish he simultaneously tarred his critics as disgusting idiot racist bigots, he solidified his claim to black authenticity by portraying himself as a hapless victim of white racism and, third, he laid claim to being an edgy avant-garde new-age cosmopolitan citizen-of-the-world-type person who doesn’t resemble “all those other presidents on those dollar bills . . .”
When Obama said that others were calling him “risky,” he was really giving himself a back-handed compliment because risky, edgy and dangerous are the necessary credentials for acceptance by “authentic” black “street” culture and by the youth culture that looks to the black street for cues about what’s cool this week. This slick Harvard grad desperately needs some street cred if he’s going to ride his children’s crusade all the way to the White House.
Clearly, this is an historic moment, pregnant with potential. It is time to end the unbroken monopoly of dead-white-guy portraiture on our currency; it is time to put a man of vision on “those dollar bills” for the sake of those with really lousy vision. It’s time for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to start cranking out Obama bucks. Why wait until he’s elected president? Didn’t Obama already adorn his portable podium with a bogus imitation of the presidential seal? In his own mind he’s already president, so let’s give him the memorial he deserves; let’s put his likeness on a three-dollar bill.
The new currency would be a tasteful and harmonious marriage of old and new technologies; it would be a delight to all the senses. The central feature would, of course, be a portrait of The One himself.
Counterfeiters would be frustrated in their attempts to match the subtle tints of the “living color” skin tones that so perfectly capture the heritage of our first mulatto commander-in-waiting. His followers could get a feel for the Great Man by stroking his manly head of hair – artfully rendered in salt-and-pepper flocking.
The muscular dimensions of his manly ears, bursting beyond the bounds of antique currencies would alert the profoundly blind to the true value of the bills they were fondling.
In all probability, only Mister Obama’s blindest followers would avail themselves of this currency’s new flavor dimension – only by licking the bills could they share with mainstream media personalities what it tastes like to kiss Lord Obama’s ass.
Once Barack Obama’s blind followers catch wind of the new currency’s scratch n’ sniff chemistry, it’s inevitable that they will start calling them B.O. bucks. The possibilities here are limitless. Merely by scraping the surface of the bills with an untrimmed fingernail, a student ID, or a welfare card, any Obama loyalist would release a rapture of olfactory connections to The One. It might be the scent of his expensive cologne, or the bouquet of his favorite French wine, or the smell of that part of him that the Reverend Jesse Jackson wants to slice off with a straight razor.
The last remaining sense is hearing. That’s a challenge, but in a time when American genius spits out birthday cards featuring portraits of Elvis on velvet with embedded microchips that wish you a “Hunka, hunka, piece of birthday cake” is a tap n’ listen Obama three-dollar bill beyond our reach? He’s the master of twaddle; he’s the pope of hope without specifics; he stands for “change” of some vague sort, so the microchip message from this Teflon messiah would be characteristically vapid, something like “I am Barack Obama. I am the one I have been waiting for.”
As the Lord Obama himself said in his 2006 bestseller, The Audacity of Hope, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” That sentence captures his essence perfectly. He has made of himself a blank screen – a mirror – in which his desperately needy loyalists see themselves perfectly reflected. As one satire of his slavish followers says: “I believe in Obama because Obama believes in everything I believe in . . .” That’s rubbish, of course, but Obama’s unhappy followers can’t see anything beyond their personal neediness. They seek deliverance from their feelings of inadequacy; they long to lose themselves in something bigger and better than themselves; they value “equality” in all things because when everyone has been pulled down to the same level the failure of individuals to achieve excellence is safely hidden; they are prepared to tear down the whole world. For all his pretensions to excellence, Barack Obama is stirring a social movement that craves mediocrity.
Meanwhile, the presumptuous presumptive presidential candidate of the Democrat Party is flitting to rallies in a freshly tricked-out 757 that the Chicago Sun Times has mockingly dubbed O-Force One. The American flag has been removed from the plane’s exterior at Obama’s request; the captain’s chair sports an embroidered “Obama ‘08/President.” There is plenty of room for his make-believe presidential seal. He wants to be ready for his new role on Day One.
When last seen, Obama was hobnobbing with Jordan’s King Abdullah in the monarch’s slate Mercedes 600. It’s nice to know that Obama has finally found a Muslim with whom he is comfortable being photographed.
As Obama has intoned, it’s time for some radical changes around here. So brace yourself: here comes “citizen-of-the-world” Barack Hussein Obama. He’s eager to be America’s first mulatto Comandante-in-Chief. A man this special has earned a place on the three-dollar-bill.
Thomas Clough
Copyright 2008
August 8, 2008