I’ve been known to spend a little of my free time at the track, and it’s always a good feeling to come home with a wallet full of dead presidents.
The thing about dead presidents is, they’re all dudes. Yes, men are the Harlem Globetrotters of U.S. presidential elections. We’re on a 226-year, 57-election winning streak.
Not that one has to be a president to land on U.S. currency. Alexander Hamilton, the face of the $10 bill, was never elected, but he was the first Treasury secretary and he died in a duel, and how awesome is that? Benjamin Franklin was a founding father, inventor, statesman and all-around incredible guy, and we couldn’t imagine the $100 bill without him.
You wouldn’t know it by looking at our paper money, but there have been some great women in U.S. history, too. A group called Women on 20s is petitioning to put one of them on the $20 bill.
In our latest non-scientific poll at HeraldNet.com, we asked whether a woman should replace Andrew Jackson as the face on the $20 bill. You came back with a resounding “no,” with only 21 percent in favor.
Is everyone just attached to Jackson’s flowing mane and thoughtful expression? Or have we just not found the right woman?
At WomenOn20s.org you can vote on a list of 15 fine candidates, but there isn’t an obvious name that everyone will rally around. Maybe that’s the problem.
We could just wait for a woman to become a dead president, hopefully after a successful term in office and a long, happy retirement.
What’s the price of waiting at least a few more decades for equal treatment? It’s only money.
— Doug Parry, Herald Web editor dparry@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @parryracer
For our next poll, we want to know what you think about the tax breaks enjoyed by Boeing:
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