The Worst Idea Ever

In light of recent comments criticizing the potential boycott of this summer's Olympic Games, Bill Littlefield got to thinking.  Would forgoing a trip to Beijing truly be the worst idea humanity ever stumbled upon?  As Bill comments, those who consider ditching the games a mortal sin may want to re-consider.

 “Put together a ranking of the worst ideas ever conceived, and ‘Olympic boycott’ would be at the top of that list.” Thus spoke Darryl Seibel of the United States Olympic Committee. Boy, he doesn’t have much imagination. I mean, boycotting the Olympics at the top of the list of the worst ideas ever conceived?  What about the traffic rotary? What about the vodka drinking contest in Russia where the second, third, and forth place finishers ended up in the hospital and the winner died? Worst ideas ever?  What about soylent green? What about taking King Kong off that island where he was perfectly happy and doing minimal harm and hauling him to New York? Bad idea for Kong and everybody else. What about toys slathered in lead paint? What about lead paint even when it isn’t slathered on toys? An Olympic boycott based on the various trespasses of the host nation may or may not be a bad idea, but it’s certainly not the worst idea ever conceived. Consider moving to Casablanca for the waters. And what about reaching into the clogged snow-blower without turning it off? Maybe, as Darryl Seibel maintains, an Olympic boycott would accomplish absolutely nothing, but only a man with a seriously warped sense of the significance of the games would suggest that it would be a worse idea than blindfolding yourself and then trying to replace a string on your Stradivarius with a chainsaw while wearing hockey gloves. And what about freeing up a legion of greed heads to write mortgages doomed by simple math to end in bankruptcy, foreclosure and the potential collapse of the economy? Isn’t that a worse idea than boycotting the Olympics? I mean, a boycott would disappoint a lot of athletes, but they’d be inconvenienced by a crash, too, and so would a lot of people who aren’t athletes. My advice to you, Mr. Seibel, is to be less eager to embrace overstatement. If, encouraged by your contention, more people start thinking about contenders for “worst idea ever conceived,” they might begin to regard boycotting the Olympics as a relatively good way to go.