Let's hear it for half-measures!

Hey, so remember when that grass roots campaign Womenon20s.org, organized to get a notable American woman on the $20 bill to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment? They had a whole vote and Harriet Tubman won? It was a pretty cool, right? Well, it's not happening.

"What's Harriet Tubman done for us lately?"

-The U.S. Treasury, apparently

Jackson's safe for now, but for
real, he'd better watch his obverse.

Instead, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew just announced that he's going to totally steal the group's idea, and then make it incredibly lame. The Treasury will be putting a woman on a bill to celebrate the 19th Amendment's centennial, but instead of replacing noted genocidal maniac Andrew Jackson on the twenty with an historically significant (and presumably non-genocidal) woman, they're going to replace Alexander Hamilton on the ten dollar bill. You know, the ol'sawbuck? No? Apparently that's the nickname for the $10 bill. Never heard that before? That's because none of us are lumberjacks, and there's about half as many 10's in circulation as there are 20's (source: the internet).

Oh, and don't worry Alexander Hamilton fans, just to make sure our nation's first Secretary of the Treasury isn't relegated to obscurity, you know, more so, not all the tens will be womanized in 2020 when the new design is rolled out. The department will still print a percentage of Hamilton tens as well.

Hamilton fans, or Hamers as they like to be called, are among
the most devoted of all historic Treasury Secretary fandoms

"They got the vote and now the ten...some
 of the tens...what more do they want?"

Here's Treasury Secretary Lew on why women should be happy he's giving them a bill at all:

"Our democracy is a work in progress. This decision of putting a woman on the ten dollar bill reflects our aspirations for the future as much as a reflection of the past."

-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew,

on how the new bill will, uh,

reflect our aspirations or whatever

Um, maybe I'm reading too much into that, but does it sound a little like he's telling women to lower their expectations? Seriously, our democracy is a work in progress so that's why we're giving women the $10 bill instead of the $20 which comes spewing out of every ATM in the country. But hold on another hundred years or so and maybe we'll think about putting Eleanor Roosevelt on the five or something. Huh, I think I just got what Lew was saying about this being a reflection of America's past...

Better luck next century...