Kevin Federline, husband of Britney Spears and newly anointed expert on monetary affairs, recently rolled into Times Square in a red truck covered with copper coins, emerging from the vehicle wearing an Abe Lincoln mask. “We’re bringing power back to the penny. Man, I feel good about the penny!” he declared — all in an effort to “save the U.S. penny from annihilation.”
K-Fed’s bizarre promotional appearance — aimed at raising loose change for needy kids and, perhaps more urgently, drawing attention to sponsor Virgin Mobile’s new one-cent text messaging plan — really wowed the press. It drew coverage on the Web sites of CNN (“The penny’s unlikely backer: Britney’s hubby”), Fox News (“K-Fed: Save the Penny!”) and ABC News (“K-Fed Pleads for Pennies”), while filling some cable airtime on CNBC and two CNN networks.
Fortunately for the penny, it is “actually not in imminent danger of being eliminated,” as ABC put it. The danger, it seems, is that a penny now costs more than a penny to produce, and Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe, who five years ago proposed abolishing the lowly penny to no avail, “has said he is now considering reintroducing the legislation.” But though Kolbe “couldn’t get one cosponsor the last time he introduced legislation toward that end” (as the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News noted recently) and though a large majority of Americans actually favor keeping the penny, that didn’t stop the media from falling for Virgin Mobile’s manufactured storyline.
K-Fed signed “a ‘Save the Penny’ petition against a bill in Washington, D.C. that’s trying to bid farewell to the one-cent piece for good,” wrote Fox News’s Catherine Donaldson-Evans.
The petition’s aim is “to convince lawmakers to save the single-cent piece from possible extinction,” reported CNNMoney’s Dave Ellis, adding later that Matthew Eggers of Americans for Common Cents, the group that co-sponsored the event, “urged lawmakers to take their time before trying to push through any legislation that would abolish the penny.”
“Billionaire Sir Richard Branson throwing in his two cents to save the humble American penny from extinction. Sir Richard and Britney Spears’s husband, Kevin Federline, launched the ‘Save the Penny’ campaign and the penny texting drive today,” said CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo at the end of Closing Bell Wednesday afternoon. “Legislation pending in Congress is aimed at stopping the production of the penny.”
“The plan lets customers of Branson’s Virgin Mobile buy a thousand text messages for $9.99 [per month], or a penny a text,” she noted.
Gosh, that’s a lot of pennies Virgin will be raking in. Reporters, start counting!
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.