The petri dish of bad ideas

I read a story the other day about McDonald’s decision to pull advertising it had placed on school report cards in Florida.

I’m not going to debate whether advertising on report cards is a good idea or not. They did it with the permission of the local school district officials in Seminole County. And we all know schools are woefully under-funded and need to find money for teachers and books.

My question is why McDonald’s did not anticipate the incredibly obvious backlash this initiative would invite given the mounting (and much-needed) focus on childhood obesity.

Who do I blame for silly decisions like this? The inventor of PowerPoint. That's who. PowerPoint is the petri dish for bad ideas.

I’ve found that PowerPoint has the ability to make the worst ideas seem logical, particularly when expressed with the obligatory Venn diagram that attempts to make the most contradictory and improbable ideas sound compatible and reasonable. I bet the McDonald's PowerPoint presentation had this Venn diagram…in one circle the word “burger”, in the other the word “school”, and in the overlapping section, the word “reward."

Perhaps peace in the middle east can be achieved through Venn diagrams. Hmmm...