It seems that there is a new measuring device called the "silly quotient". Well, not really, but read this piece from the London Times and maybe you'll come to the realization that we in Israel could identify with its contents.
An excerpt from
Yes minister, but isn't that rather silly?
Jane Shilling
...I have always thought silliness a rather underrated virtue. You can’t grow up, as I did, on a diet of Andrew Lang’s Red, Blue and Yellow books of fairy stories without eventually noticing that, in the end, silliness trumps cleverness and sophistication every time.
One of the earliest meanings of “silly”, before the word came exclusively to mean foolish, was “innocent”. And although that meaning has fallen away from the dictionary definition, it is remarkable how a certain air of slightly mad simplicity still clings to big new ideas...
...What got me started on this train of thought was silliness in politics, and not necessarily in the benign, fairytale, pre-Chaucerian, innocent sense. There is a sort of political trope — you could call it an initiative — that takes the form of a Ministerial Bright Idea. Quite often (for ministers, though they may be silly, are rarely stupid) it is a notion that, if put into practice, would make a useful difference to the lives of the electorate. But almost invariably it is delivered in a style so objectionable, so patronising, so maddeningly . . . silly, as to make the electorate want to rise up and deliver to the minister concerned a sharp smack round the head, so as to bring her (or him) to his (or her) senses.
...Two decades is a long time in politics. Long enough, you’d think, for ministers to have learnt a thing or two about delivering initiatives. But nah. This week they’re at it again and nothing has changed.
Now, where is the Israeli satirist to put this into local parlance and form?
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