white house wiki: Andrew Jackson

"The executions, and Jackson's invasion of territory belonging to Spain, a country with which the U.S. was not at war, created an international incident."

Ooh Willie Mays

I have long felt that we should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 dollar bill, on account of he was a horrible man who expanded Presidential power through assholery alone and also tried to commit a few genocides. "He was a man of his time," people argue, but the Supreme Court, among many others, told him that the Trail of Tears was not so OK, to which he famously replied, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him go fuck himself."

Today I found a website that agrees with me: GETJACKSONOFFTHE20.NET. In addition to an essay about Jackson that I didn't read, they also have a YouTube video wherein a band plays a song featuring the lines "Desecration of a burial site / Did you go shopping at the mall tonight?" and the chorus:

If Hitler was on the 20 dollar bill,
How would the Jews feel?
Trail of tears….

Indeed. So the question is, who do we put on the 20 after we kick Jackson off? The obvious answer is: Willie Mays. In addition to being a great American, he's got to be the least provocative choice ever. Baseball is one of America's greatest cultural inventions and exports, and although some don't particularly like it, no one hates it. Mays is arguably the greatest player ever, plus he's black, and it's about damn time we had a black guy on some money. Also, I can't think of anything bad he's done off the top of my head.

More importantly, Mays aces the Genocides/Golden Gloves test (Take the ratio of "Genocides Perpetrated" to "Golden Gloves Won". If the resultant number is anything but zero, then you have too many genocides to be on money).

With Jackson gone, we will quickly realize how flawed the rest of our currency is. But we can't just change it all at once. We need a way to ease Americans into it. To that end, here is a schedule for fixing U.S. currency:

Year One

The Jackson for Mays swap. People will obviously cheer it, setting the stage for more sweeping reforms.

Year Two, January

One candidate for appearing on currency who has very vocal supporters is Ronald Reagan. Just to keep them from complaining, we'll put him on the penny, since Lincoln already has the five anyway.

Year Two, February

We discontinue the penny, one of the most worthless currencies in the world.

Year Three

Grant gets booted from the 50. He was a badass, but his presence sends too martial a message. We'll replace him with Gertrude Stein, one of the most important literary stylists of all time and three oppressed groups in one (woman, Jew, lesbian). To appease fans of drunken white guys, we'll put Faulkner, probably the greatest American novelist, on the back, along with the text of his Nobel Prize speech.

Year Four

Revise the dollar coin. Dollar coins are a pretty good idea, but they never work because idiots collect them and keep them out of circulation. The mint exacerbates this by doing series, like the current "weird misshapen pictures of Presidents" series. To fix this problem, we'll put a Georgia O'Keefe painting on one side and a Jackson Pollock on the other. Nearly impossible to counterfeit, this coin will also repulse your average coin collector with its combination of vaginal imagery and art that their kids could have done.

Year Five

This year we replace slave-rapist Thomas Jefferson on the nickel. A known asshole whose racial views were illiberal for the 1780s, Jefferson also believed in something called "yeoman farmers". We'll replace him with John Coltrane, perhaps the greatest American musician and a powerful spiritual teacher, and also a black guy, which Jefferson would hate. We'll leave Monticello on the back, just to drive home the fact that this is an insult to Jefferson.

Year Six

Now we replace Jefferson on the two-dollar bill, a real thing that you can ask for at the bank. Since this bill is a decent piece of currency that has virtually no impact on anything, we'll put Eisenhower on it. The back will show the moon landing, because that's one of the coolest things America ever did, and we should have astronauts somewhere.

Year Seven

Ben Franklin is a beloved doddering old idiot, but Mark Twain was better. Compare these quotes:

"A good conscience is a continual Christmas."- Franklin
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society."-Twain

There you have it. On the back we'd show a cowboy punching a bear. Not only would this depict rugged American can-do spirit, it would also show our historical attitude to nature and things/nations of people that live in it.

Year Eight

The most complicated year. We need to replace Washington on the quarter, because he's already got the $1 bill. The obvious solution: Put Walt Whitman on the quarter. On the back you can put a picture of him winking at Herman Melville on the Brooklyn ferry. But the quarter is too small to show that, so here's what you do: Put Lincoln on the quarter, and Whitman (and Melville) on the five. Then, on the back of the quarter, you can show Whitman hugging Lincoln.

There you have it. In less than a decade, our currency would go from terrible to good. Here's the final result:

$1- Still Washington, who was good

$2- Eisenhower/Astronauts

$5- Whitman/Whitman winking at Melville

$10- Still Hamilton, who invented the American monetary system and was cool

$20- Willie Mays. On the back, a game between the SF Giants and the LA Dodgers, Koufax pitching. We'll leave it unclear as to whether this is 1962 or 1963 so you don't know if it's a Mays home run or a Koufax perfect game.

$50-Stein/Faulkner

$100-Twain/Cowboy punching bear

Penny- Reagan (discontinued)

Nickel- Coltrane/Monticello

Dime- Still FDR

Quarter- Lincoln/Lincoln hugging Whitman

Dollar- Pollock/O'Keefe

THE 2008 NBA PRESIDENTIAL DRAFT. part one: picks 1-10

The two subjects nearest to my heart, politics and basketball, can occasionally intertwine in pretty interesting ways. And in other cases, there’s gonna be some parallels that are massively shoehorned, just because I think it’s fun to look at the two together.

With that in mind, here is

the 2008 NBA Draft, if the entrants were each of our Presidents, evaluated by their character in office/peak athletic years.

PART ONE: THE FIRST TEN PICKS


1
Chicago Bulls- Abraham Lincoln

You gotta go with the hometown hero. Lincoln might not be the best athlete in the draft, but he brings serious character and leadership to a young team. We’re talking the Larry Bird of American NBA Presidents. Besides, the man has height- 6’4”- which makes him one of the few Presidents who could legitimately play at the NBA level.

2
Miami Heat- Teddy Roosevelt

Although Abe goes first, there’s definitely a Sam Bowie- Michael Jordan vibe in how this shakes out. Teddy is an absolute beast- in addition to serious athletic versatility, he’s also got the obsessive, internal drive to be a champion. TR, Wade and the Matrix give Miami an enviable core.

3
Minnesota Timberwolves- Gerald Ford

Ford is the best athlete in the draft– he was an all-star college athlete and could have played pro football if he wanted to. Additionally he’s a midwesterner with a low-key, workmanlike attitude- a great leader for a young T-Wolves team.

4
Los Angeles Clippers- Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s a Hollywood guy and he’s the perfect face for a franchise that could really use one. He’s a great athlete and a charismatic interview. Good fit for this team.

5
Memphis Grizzlies- Andrew Jackson

Jackson is a major wild card; he’s six feet tall and very thin, but he’s also fucking tough and insane. He’s the ultimate dice roll- if he can stay in the game and avoid technicals, he’s got game-changing potential as a defensive and psychological force on the court. Memphis badly needs to rebuild, and Jackson gives them the draft’s most charismatic enforcer.

6
New York Knicks- George Washington

This is the first really tough call. The Knicks would love to take Grant but they’ve already got Reynaldo Balkman playing a similar game. The Knicks are a badly fractured team and they need instant leadership, which comes from either hometown hero FDR or the Greatest American, Washington. Ultimately you gotta go with Washington because he’s the father of our country.

7
Seattle Supersonics- George W. Bush

Bush is a great athlete who exercises constantly. He can bench 5 reps of 185- more than Sonics star Kevin Durant. It also helps that the owner of the Sonics is a wealthy homophobe. Obviously there’s some dangerous bust potential here, some character issues. Bush is intensely sheltered, but he might be okay. After all, if the team moves to Oklahoma, he’ll play in front of a sympathetic crowd- the only type of crowd he can tolerate.

8
Milwaukee Bucks- John F. Kennedy

This is a reach. Kennedy the athlete really reminds me of Yi Jianlian the athlete. Although there’s the outward projection of vigor and talent, his actual physical state is pretty mysterious. Considering the Bucks badly need star power, and were willing to roll the dice on Yi for a year, it makes sense that they’d give a similar try with JFK.

9
Charlotte Bobcats- Franklin D. Roosevelt

This is a good steal. At his athletic peak, FDR was a pretty versatile athlete. At his intellectual peak, he’s a bold, creative leader who surrounds himself with great talent. This Bobcats team has the talent but lacks a real on-court leader, besides maybe Ray Felton. FDR could take their chemistry to the next level.

10
New Jersey Nets- Ulysses S. Grant

The Nets are a young, soft team that could badly use some interior toughness. Grant is generally kindof a dumb, narrow focused guy, but he’s a dogged, vicious player. After Jackson, he’s the most intense ‘enforcer’ option in this draft, and he could cause some real trouble in the paint.


COMING TOMORROW: picks 11-30 and the presidents who didn't make the cut