Well, after some tough campaigning, we did it; Harriett Tubman is officially going to replace Andrew Jackson as the new face of the twenty dollar bill! While that totally is an awesome, exciting piece of progress towards the representation of women, black people, abolitionists, and so many more groups throughout America, it does beg a very important question: where is Andrew Jackson going to go after this? Now that he’s been booted off the twenty, where are we going to put him?
I mean, he can’t just not be on anything, he’s Andrew Jackson! He caught a bullet in the chest and yet still killed a man in a duel, defending the honor of his wife! (Well, apparently, it was actually more about a horse race.) But he won a decisive victory at the Battle of New Orleans ! So what if the battle happened after the treaty that ended the war was signed, that’s not the point. When he was president, he dismantled the Second Bank of America because he felt it favored the wealthy, urban elite; he’s like the 1800’s Bernie Sanders! I mean, yes, a Bernie Sanders with a diametrically opposed view on minorities than present day one, but his dislike for banks still counts, right? What I’m trying to say is Andrew Jackson is too important to be forgotten; now that he’s not going to be on money any more, we need to figure out what the perfect way to preserve Old Hickory’s visage is so that his legacy can keep living on.
1. A memorial in Washington, D.C.
Oh, apparently there actually is a statue of him in D.C., right near the White House and everything. Ok. Well, I think maybe another one would be appropriate. The first one is kinda more focused on him being a general, so something commemorating his time as a president would be nice. Something that combines his status as a man of the people with some noteworthy legislation from when he was in office? So maybe we have him amongst the common man, casting them out of their homes because they’re Native Americans and congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 during Jackson’s first term. Well. That might not be the best.
2. On mugs, t-shirts, and tote bags
So maybe we don’t need another Statue of him, but whatever, because these days it’s not about who you embody in bronze, it’s about what you wear! A great way to get a face out to the masses is emblazon it on a t-shirt with a funny slogan attached. I mean, the jokes write themselves. Like, maybe you have a t-shirt where he’s wearing sunglasses and is challenging you, the reader, to a duel? Cause, ya know, Jackson loved to duel all the time). Ha! Yay violence! A mug with a confirmed murderer on it would quickly become my favorite mug, amiright? Best seller right there.
Alright, I get it. Maybe Andrew Jackson’s history of brawls and fighting shouldn’t be glorified, and calling attention to it via tote bags would be kinda confusing and incongruous with the knitting that the tote carries. We can still figure this out, no bad ideas in a brainstorming session.
3. Pieces of Wood
Because his nickname is Old Hickory! Get it!? So we put his face on all sorts of pieces of wood: busts carved from trees felled by flannel-wearing frontiersmen, his famous scowl burned into planks to be mounted onto the walls of log cabins, replica canes sturdy enough to both carry your weight AND beat the life out of a would be assassin (not something Jackson did during an actual attempted assassination, but I’m sure he regrets it). Sure, nobody really needs a flammable Andrew Jackson silently judging them from up above, but let’s not pull the thread about what we “need” lest the sweater unravels, right? Tacky tchotchkes befit the dignity of a president, right?
Confession time: this was the weakest of my ideas, but no bad ideas in a brainstorming session!
4. Occupy Wall Street Tent
Ok, so we’re going either too negative or too frivolous. Let’s dial this in. Yes, Andrew Jackson was a violent racist, but let’s not forget that he also played a big role in dismantling the Second Bank of America, fighting against corporate greed for the common man! We can work with this. Who else is fighting the good fight against Wall Street? The Occupy Wall Street movement. We can get Jackson branded tents, Jackson brand blankets, eggs with Jackson’s face on them to huck at the Wall Street fat cats! Yeah! And if we buy the eggs wholesale and ship them overseas, then we can minimize the overhead by using Chinese labor to print the faces on the egg, then turn around a sell them at ten bucks a pop— Maybe trying to roll out a product line of Andrew Jackson-approved hucking eggs and selling them in Wal-Mart chains across the country is kinda playing into the greed that both Occupy Wall Street and what Jackson fought against. Alright, never mind.
5. A type of cheese
There is a classic story where Jackson got a giant block of cheese as a gift and he shared it with the people of D.C. 10,000 people showed up to eat 1,400 pounds of cheese, and that’s the kind of tall tale that —
Oh man, I’m looking back at some stuff about the Trail of Tears. Oof. Guys, that was a real black mark on our nation’s history. Thousands of Cherokee tribes members were forced to out of their ancestral homes and Jackson helped facilitate it. An estimated 4,000 of the 15,000 people who left, died from exhaustion on this trip. The whole Indian Removal Act of 1830 kinda overshadows a humorous anecdote about a dairy product. Kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth about this whole endeavor.
6. Urinal Cakes
At this point, I think these are all this guy really deserves his face on. I mean, people apparently liked him when he was president, but most of the people we have on record from that time were rich white dudes, and the 13th amendment wasn’t for another thirty years after his presidency, so I suspect there were plenty of people who would LOVE a chance to piss on his face. In fact, I can’t think of a more fitting F-you to a bigot of his magnitude.
7. Washington Redskins mascot
Ahh, there ya go! Finally, a position worthy of our seventh president! What a perfect way to reward a man who has a grossly misguided relationship with the indigenous people of this country than to give Daniel Snyder the rights to use Andrew Jackson as the new mascot for the Redskins. It kills two india—…birds… with one stone; it allows the team to move past the current drama surrounding its offensive logo and name, while still maintaining a legacy intertwined with oppression of Native Americans. Nothing would be a more fitting salute to Andrew Jackson than having his face worn by a bunch of old white men who are just really really wrong about race as they oversee a team of predominately black players who gather together every week just to give each other concussions so that blue collar Americans scream at the resulting head injuries from in the comfort of their own homes. I think that would make Old Hickory proud.
Cameron Petti is a Chicago-land native. He’s currently attempting to survive off of freelance theatre work, and hasn’t had to eat too much cat food to achieve this goal. Check out how happy and full of life Cameron is on tumblr and twitter.