Health Alert: The Stupid Virus

Forget the bird flu--we have a stupidity virus running rampant among us. We've already noted the stupidity potential inherent in Michael Brown's new shingle, which is currently up to attract well-heeled corporate clients interested in magnifying...er, excuse me...managing disasters.

How about a vote for the organizers of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade? As stupid as an insurgent M&M filled with hot air, don't you think? In case you don't live in New York City, anyone walking outside Thursday morning here would have immediately written off the idea of sending megaton balloons into the sky, especially if their reins were to be controlled by people with as much training and experience in the performance as Michael Brown had for his job. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, "you don't need a weatherman to know how hard the wind blows."

As many of you no doubt know, the Darwin Awards site celebrates and honors the stupidity of the dead--that is, of those whose stupidity was powerful enough to call Charon's ferry to their shore. What appears to be lacking is a salute to corporate stupidity--the kind that will hand over legal tender to the likes of Michael Brown for advice on disaster planning, or that will send vinyl weapons of mass destruction into the air on a day when cyclonic gusts are blowing through a city whose skyscrapers create a convenient and synergistic tunnel effect. All for profit: indeed, there seems to be no stupidity or complacency too large or too destructive if it serves the idol of Profit.

Therefore, I am taking further nominations for the palm of corporate stupidity--let us call our project the Thigh Bone Honors, as a tip of the cap to..."the FEMA".

Sorry about that...I've had a case of punitis for about 30 years running now.