But yeah. The Treasury Department was supposed to announce which woman was going to replace Alexander Hamilton on the ten dollar bill, but they have delayed the decision until 2016. Why? Well, let’s see: there were the people who were fighting over which woman should replace Alexander Hamilton (if we must, my vote is for Harriet Tubman or Susan B. Anthony*). Then there were the people who want to know – like Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s predecessor Ben Bernanke – why Alexander Hamilton had to be the one to get the chop. And then there were the people who want to know why Andrew Jackson, specifically, wasn’t the one getting the chop**.

In other words: there was a bit more of, ah, a discussion than the Treasury Department had anticipated. As that WSJ article notes, Treasury actually has a bit of a time crunch, here: they’re supposed to be redesigning our bills again (counterfeiters never sleep), and so the face on the bill actually matters.  Particularly if Treasury goes ahead and puts Hamilton and somebody else on the ten dollar bill, which is precisely the sort of this-will-just-annoy-everybody ‘compromise’ that government bureaucracy is so known for. I mean, seriously, nobody’s going to like that, and they’ll all have a point.

So what’s the actual answer, here?  …To pick a side, frankly.  Which, yes, will infuriate somebody; and possibly somebody whom I’m allied with, which means that I’d join in on raking Treasury over the coals out of solidarity.  Doesn’t really matter, though: the Treasury Department volunteered for this controversy when they decided that they should put a woman on a form of our currency that wasn’t a dollar coin that nobody uses***. The least that they can do here is keep going down the diversity rabbit hole, and take their lumps accordingly.  If for no other reason than because that way they can be useful object lessons for the next generation of government officials who wish to mess with things that they do not quite understand…

Moe Lane

*Both Republicans, by the way.

**That one I can and have answered, actually: if they did Andrew Jackson would “rise from the dead and kill everyone in the Treasury Department except the cleaning staff.”

***Yes, I’m sure that five people will crop up in comments and talk about how the dollar coin has made their lives an Earthly paradise.  I’m genuinely glad for you folks.  Well done. The rest of us still don’t use the blessed things enough to even be annoyed by them.