Lew’s signature: What it reveals

Some say it resembles a broken Slinky. Others think it looks like Sally Brown’s hair from Peanuts. But we can all surely agree, said Kevin Roose in NYMag.com,that Jack Lew’s “childish loop-de-loop” of a signature cannot be “plastered all over the legal tender of the United States.” That’s what’s going to happen if Lew gets confirmed as President Obama’s next Treasury secretary—unless Lew does the decent thing and amends his signature to be at least somewhat legible. Late-night comedians have been having a field day with Lew’s little chain of spirals, said Emily Heil in WashingtonPost.com. Obama himself even got in on the fun, saying Lew had promised to “make at least one letter legible in order not to debase our currency.” But Lew’s tormentors should “be gentle with him.” Professional graphologists say the signature reveals that the famously acerbic and wonky budget expert is not just a very private man, but a sensitive one with a “softer side.”

Actually, the experts are divided, said Cristina Corbin in FoxNews.com. Yes, a rounded hand is generally seen as evidence of sensitivity, but Lew’s “OOOooooOOO” is so aggressively illegible that some graphologists are saying it proves “he’s an original thinker who speaks his mind and doesn’t care what others think of him.” As for whether Lew should alter his John Hancock for use on U.S. banknotes, said Robert Wood in Forbes.com, “changing your signature isn’t like changing your clothes.” The whole point of a signature is that each person only has one of them, and that it stays consistent. How can Lew create a whole new signature and thus put a false identity on millions of American banknotes?

Lew should stick with the signature he’s got, said Ian Salisbury in MarketWatch.com. In the digital age, everyone’s signature is “losing relevance as well as legibility.” Not only have we largely stopped using handwriting to communicate, we have countless new and more reliable methods—from PINs to retinal scans—for people to prove that they are who they say they are. Lew clearly understands this, said Alexandra Petri in WashingtonPost.com. His signature is so ridiculous “it transcends bad handwriting,’’ and can only be seen as “an absurdist protest against handwriting as an institution.” Like many other great works of modern art, it is a “meaningless scribble that will soon be worth millions of dollars.”

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