No Black Face on A Greenback?

August 1st, 2008 12:15 PM

Sometimes, when the MRC makes up artificial quotes from media mouths for our April Fools edition of Notable Quotables, we're just a little ahead of our time. With Obama's racial remarks about how his face doesn't look like all the white faces on the currency, it matches what we imagined Bryant Gumbel asking the Treasury Secretary on NBC's Today in 1996. (Remember, this is a fake. It's fake but perhaps accurate):

"With the new one-hundred-dollar note coming out this week, many in the African-American community wonder why Franklin, one of the architects of a Constitution that institutionalized slavery and set the framework for the excesses of the Reagan years, is still being honored. With billions in currency transferring hands, much of it passing through African-American hands, there has never been a black face on a greenback. Why?"

Gumbel could be Obama's running mate. Gumbel's sing-song "Why" was one of his trademark questioning tics. Hat tip to former MRC staffer Jim Forbes, who "coined" this question at the time.