Bad ideas develop their own projectile inertia. Once energized, goofiness can sail untouched past the moment when the idea can be unmasked as ill-considered and intemperate.
Here's a goofy idea that seems self-propelled at the moment. Let's give Lake County Discovery Museum's 3.5 million-item Curt Teich Postcard Archives to the University of Illinois for free. That will save the county thousands of dollars in museum space and management costs. And besides, the university knows how to take care of such rare assets better than we common folks do.
Forest Preserves district officials pitched launching negotiations on such an idea to the Lake County Board recently. No one arose to suggest it might be a mistake based on misplaced values, like Paris giving the Eiffel Tower to Hoboken to save money. In fact, there seemed to be mostly sad, resigned, nodding-in-agreement-it's-inevitable heads.
Absent another volunteer, I will raise my hand.
It's a stratospherically dumb idea. Don't do it. You'll be sorry.
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