Commentary

Stupidity reaches new heights
Lotto fever must affect the brain, Doug Clark says.

Doug Clark
Staff writer

Charles Darwin never said a thing about survival of the smartest.

No matter how highly evolved the world would become, the dumb and the dense remain as endemic to humanity as fleas at a dog pound.

Here we are, living in an age of space stations and atom smashers and gene splitters.

And yet ...

Dummies still abound. Get ready for the latest shocking example:

There are dunderheads in this state who believe Seattle's Space Needle really has been SOLD AND MOVED TO MOSES LAKE!

Workers at the Space Needle and Washington State Lottery officials have received calls from people upset about this so-called guy named Steve who won enough Mega Millions Benjamins to buy the famed landmark and relocate it to Grant County.

The Steve scenario, of course, is the absurd plot to a recent string of lottery-produced TV and radio commercials.

Many of you are probably shaking your head right now thinking, "Nobody can be this gullible."

Oh, but they can.

And some of them live right here.

"I was in Sacred Heart (Medical Center) yesterday and overheard a couple of people talking about the Space Needle being moved to Moses Lake," writes Diane in an e-mail she sent me last Wednesday.

"These people thought it was terrible and, `How could Washington -- especially Seattle -- allow that to happen?"'

Before going any further, let us take a moment to pray that neither of the morons Diane was eavesdropping on were involved in any way with surgery or the dispensing of medications.

The commercials were produced in a series and are quite clever in contrast with the lottery's usually unimaginative standards.

The first batch began airing last month. They told of Steve's good fortune and big purchase.

Next came aerial shots of the Needle rolling slowly east on I-90. It was atop the giant crawler that is used to ferry the space shuttle.

The latest installment reveals the renamed Steve Needle standing tall outside Moses Lake.

Seattle-based lottery marketeers came up with the idea as a way to convey the hugeness of Mega Millions, which boasts jackpots of up to $363 million.

They never figured anyone would actually swallow the trick photography and hyperbole whole.

They should have.

The lottery relies heavily on the stupid. Most people with an IQ over, say, 80 can see the lottery for the sucker bet it is and don't buy tickets.

Take the so-called Mega Millions. The odds of winning are 1 in 135 million.

That's 225 times worse than than the odds that you'll some day be killed by lightning or receive a social disease from Anna Nicole Smith.

Face it. If you're numbskull enough to pour your money into Mega Millions, you're probably fool enough to believe anything.

A source deep inside the Space Needle reports that calls of concern started rolling in shortly after the commercials began airing.

Not all callers were angry. One woman from Moses Lake was excited for the Space Needle to be heading her way.

Being told it was all a TV spoof is what made her mad.

Another caller wanted to file a formal complaint about the "ass who bought the Space Needle."

An old man said he was sad to see it go.

For the record, the Space Needle is 605 feet tall. The foundation extends another 30 feet below ground.

The total weight of the Space Needle is 9,550 tons, or roughly four Rosie O'Donnells.

From this we can clearly see that the crawler would never be big enough to hold the Space Needle, let alone haul it over Snoqualmie Pass.

For that you'd need Spokane's Big Red Wagon and two Dodge Ram pickups with a tow bar.

(EDITOR's NOTE TO DUMMIES: Mr. Clark is exaggerating. It would take three pickups and two tow bars.)

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