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Big Gusher Yearns for Cartoon Mapdom

September 16, 2008

Shane Jett is a 33-year-old Oklahoma state representative who’s up for reelection on November 4. His opponent, a 22-year-old machinist, says that he decided to run against Jett because of an idea that Jett proposed last November: he wants to build a $100 million, 1,100-foot-tall fake oil derrick to straddle the Oklahoma River.

Jett first posted his plan — idea #3149 — to the “100 Ideas Initiative” web site on 11/7/2007 at 4:10:07 PM. The derrick that he envisioned would be the tallest structure west of Chicago — far taller than even the Stratosphere Tower — and offer visitors bird’s-eye views of Oklahoma City landmarks such as its milk bottle building and Miss America statues. Huge “gushers” of water would regularly explode from its summit. “This would guarantee,” Jett wrote, “that every caricature map of the USA will always have an oil derrick in the center along with the Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore, the Space Needle, and the Gateway Arch.”

[It's really an ingenious way to view the world -- where landmark decisions always factor in how something would look on a cartoon map. We're going to write to Congress about that, as soon as we pull over our boxy cartoon car so we can re-muss our cartoon hairdos.]

Far from backing off of this idea, Jett has continued to promote it. His re-election, it seems, will be in part a referendum on his Big Spritzer. We wish him well, although it should be said that political campaigns linked to giant urban tourist attractions don’t always turn out as their champions had hoped.

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