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No Stupid Idea Is An Island

Can you outdumb The Island?

by
Dan Klein
March 31, 2011

There is an old Soviet-era joke (I guess all Soviet-era everything are old now) in author of Nextbook Press’ Hillel: If Not Now, When? Joseph Telushkin’s Jewish Humor. I don’t have it in front of me, but it goes something like:

During a rally, a Soviet leader tells the crowd that in fifty years every citizen of the Soviet Union will own an airplane. Some brave or suicidal soul in the crowd asks, “Why should we want an airplane?”

“You fool!” responds the official, “What if you are in Kiev, and you hear there is bread in Moscow?”

Completely unrelated, Prime Minister Netanyahu apparently wants to build an artificial island off the coast of Gaza to house a sea and airport and maybe a smoke monster. Being attacked by environmentalists, the Israeli ministry of environment protect, and the Palestinian Authority, it might be, as contributing editor Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted, “the stupidest idea ever.”

Is that a challenge, Mr. Goldberg? While the island is very stupid, I, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll, can think of six idiotic things before breakfast. For instance: Build the world’s biggest Jenga tower in Gaza to attract tourism. Scroll readers, I’m betting you can come up with some pretty brilliant stupidity of your own. Leave them in the comments!