'Queer As A Two-Dollar Bill'
Though I no longer recall where, I ran across this phrase (Google rating: 17) a
few weeks ago on some bulletin board or other. Whoever wrote it was immediately
corrected by pedantic readers (not me) who pointed out that the traditional
insult is 'queer as a three-dollar bill' (Google rating: 625). I don't
know about Canada or Australia or Singapore, but in the U.S. the two-dollar
bill is legal tender and has been for many years.
Perhaps Andrew Sullivan and his allies in the campaign to
normalize homosexuality might want to adopt the erroneous version as a slogan.
After all, the American two-dollar bill is:
- Only a small percentage of the population of America's wallets,
purses, and piggy banks. You can go for weeks without seeing one, but you can
find them even in the smallest town if you look for them.
- Perfectly normal. The two-dollar bill is legal tender and just
as valid as any other American currency for any monetary transaction.
- Often discriminated against. Merchants in particular dislike
two-dollar bills, since there is no place for them in the standard cash
register drawer. Ordinary citizens sometimes refuse to accept them, especially
if they've never seen them before. But once they get to know them . . .
- Associated with charm, wit, and intelligence. The two-dollar
bill has a picture of
Thomas
Jefferson, not some stolidly great man like Washington ($1), or a
rough-hewn or downright crude one like Lincoln ($5) or Jackson ($20) or Grant
($50).
- Very handsome.
Ben Franklin
($100) was as witty and charming as Jefferson, and may have had more
substantial intellectual accomplishments, but just compare their faces -- and
hairstyles. And then there's Franklin's reputation as a lady's man even in his
old age . . .
- The reverses of the other
denominations depict monuments or government buildings or weird pyramids with
eyes. The back of the two-dollar bill features an all-male
social
gathering.
Take it away, Andrew.
P.S. This is a joke. Please don't take it seriously. I think it
was Robert Asahina in The American Spectator who wrote, of the old
compare-and-contrast method, "no doubt somebody somewhere is right now
comparing Kafka and Jack London on the grounds that they both wrote animal
stories". (This is quoted from very-long-term memory, and may not be totally
accurate, but the gist is right.)
Posted by Dr. Weevil at March 23, 2002 10:20 PM
