I opened my mail today and discovered something from my phone company. They were offering a five-cent/minute long distance deal, but something wasn’t quite right about the nickel they depicted on the ad. Sure enough, I got a real nickel and compared the text. A real nickel says “IN GOD WE TRUST” left of Jefferson’s image. Verizon’s nickel says “FIVE CENTS”, as if a true depiction of US currency is somehow offensive. I also find it strange that they didn’t just put the word “Liberty” to the left of Jefferson’s image, as it appears on his right side on the real nickel. Maybe Verizon thought its customers wouldn’t get the connection between a round coin with Jefferson’s face on it and the “five cents/minute deal”, thus the explicit mention of “FIVE CENTS.”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 20th, 2005 at 12:43 am and is filed under happenings, photography, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.