Opinion: More message bang for your buck

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George Washington just spoke to me from the grave.

No floating tables, no ectoplasm, no Ouija board. He spoke to me from a dollar bill I just got in change. Alongside his mouth is a cartoon-like voice bubble. The first President of the United States told me, ‘I grew hemp!’

True enough, he did. So did other early and even later upright Americans, as quite a lucrative cash crop, hemp being a vital part of the manufacture of rope, paper and other products.

The legalize-hemp movement had wittily drafted Washington to its cause with this voice balloon. Now, that doesn’t qualify as criminally defacing the currency, because there’s no intent to render it unfit for circulation, as the law requires.

On the contrary. ‘Message money’ is meant to be circulated and spent as widely as possible -– that’s the entire point of it.

One website offers an engaging history of ‘message money,’ bills of various denominations carrying a political point along with their face values: ‘LESBIAN $$$’ and ‘GAY MONEY,’ to show the buying power of the gay community, ‘KEEP ABORTION LEGAL and SAFE,’ from circa 2001, when the Bush White House was rolling back reproductive rights, a ‘WHERE’S MY DADDY?’ message for fathers’ rights, a variety of anti-Bush stamps, like ‘IMPEACH BUSH,’ and anti-France stamps, anti-Starbucks stamps, and, creepily, the Confederate flag and ‘Deo Vindice,’ the motto on the seal of the Confederacy, meaning ‘God Will Vindicate,’ stamped across Lincoln’s face on the five-dollar bill.

The next message-buck stamp in this economy should be a voice bubble reading, ‘SAVE ME.’ Which has a lot more meanings than the piggy-bank one.