Of all the things to worry about...

The new Washington dollars are hitting the streets tomorrow. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the collective "who cares" being given off by the populace. Apparently they are switching the face every three months to that of a different president, but only up through Gerald Ford because Jimmy Carter isn't dead yet.

Yep, apparently there's a law somewhere that dictates that no living president can be depicted on a coin. Per the story above:

After Washington, the presidents honored this year will be John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The program is scheduled to run into 2016. A president must have been dead at least two years to appear on a coin.

Frankly, I find this rule to be the silliest I've ever heard. Not that the presidend has to be dead - but that he has to be dead for *two years*. What, is this for fear of a dead president suddenly returning to life, digging himself out of his tomb, and suddenly developing an ego because "Now I've got a coin with my face on it, ooooOOOOOooooo! Now, MUST...FIND...BRAINS!"

Because clearly, that president would be a zombie. And there's nothing worse than a zombie president on a massive ego trip. Thank goodness our government was smart enough to pass this law ahead of time!

Edit: Oops, ya'll are right - those are *dollars*, not *quarters*.

Comments

MonkeyMom said…
No...no...see, it *is* a scandal because it's not a quarter...it's a DOLLAR. A dollar COIN! Just like those tricksy European such n suches...

So see...we *have* to have laws about our dead presidents...otherwise we'd be Eurocopiers AND zombie enablers...and really, we can't be both and still face the world.
towwas said…
Yeah, dollar coin = way more exciting than a quarter. They have rules about how long you have to be dead before you can be on a stamp, too, or they used to, anyway...not sure if they had to change them so people could do those make-yer-own-stamp things.
grrrbear said…
Whoops. Okay, that'll need to get fixed...

[TIME PASSES]

The other reason folks are up in arms about dollar coins is that once they're in circulation it's only a matter of time before the paper dollars are phased one entirely. And then what would people put in strippers' g-strings? They'd sure look funny with little coin boxes attached to the sides...
KC said…
I'm the kind of person who regularly goes through my change purse and gets rid of all change except quarters and a couple pennies. I don't want dollar coins! I want my paper one's. Wah wah wah. I'm such a complainer!
Unknown said…
Now, it's been a long time since I've taken an African history class, but wasn't President Sacajawea only dead a few months before they put him on the three-dollar quarter?