Four days ago, back on this post, Burl wrote the following:

The rest of the country is worried about money, but South Carolina will be OK because you’re getting rid of currency, thanks to Mike Pitts.

And I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. But I was busy at the moment, and let it pass.

Then today, my brother sent me this item from The Onion:

Lawmaker Seeks To Ban U.S. Currency

Mike Pitts, a representative in the South Carolina legislature, has proposed a law that would replace dollars with gold and silver in his state. What do you think?

Dana Asquith,
Systems Analyst
“My only hope is that they offer a favorable exchange rate with Confederate bills.”

Mark Bonnie,
Barber
“I’m fine with it just as long as those fools at CVS melt me down the correct amount of change for once.”

Samuel Briottet,
Apothecary
“Sing ho, for the glories of bimetallism! With South Caroline on the side of Free Silver, there’s no stopping us from repealing the Coinage Act and putting William Jennings Bryan in the White House in 1896! Huzzah!”

… and asked me whether it was based upon a true news item.

So I started looking, and yes indeed it’s true. Rep. Mike Pitts, R-Laurens (not to be confused with my representative, Ted Pitts, who is a sensible fellow), apparently not satisfied with the generous portion of retro-foolishness in the recent Nullification Act of 2010, has indeed proposed that we ban the Yankee dollar in favor of gold and silver.

Next, I fully expect him to read William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech in its entirety in the House chamber. Remind me to miss that.

Speaking of missing things, though… As a reader of The State (and The Wall Street Journal, but that’s less to the point at the moment), I did not know about this. Was it in the paper and I missed it? If so, please send me the link.

Note that I had to be informed of this by two out-of-state sources, Burl in Hawaii and The Onion. And apparently it was getting such good play out of state that Burl just assumed we knew what he was talking about. To their credit, some folks such as Adam Fogle over at TPS had reported it (in fact, I think he might have broken it). But nothing in my capital city paper, which makes me feel kind of weird. Here’s hoping y’all will embarrass me by showing me where it was in the paper and I missed it.

Mind you, this is just the sort of thing we would have ignored in editorial when I headed that department, because it is a bill that’s going nowhere, so why burn one of our few editorial slots on that when there’s so much foolishness that IS likely to pass? But one would at least expect a take-note-of in the news pages, if only to put what the rest of the country is saying about us in perspective.

And what they are saying, of course, is there go those idiots in South Carolina again, living in the 19th century. If Jon Stewart hasn’t commented on it yet, I’m sure he will. But what can we do?

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