Doug Clark: Certain mysteries better left unsolved

The latest hiccup in the quest to turn up Jimmy Hoffa fell flatter than a Keebler elf in a trash compactor.

No moldy Hush Puppies or bits of decomposed leisure suit were tweezed from the dirt dug out of a backyard in suburban Detroit.

I couldn’t be more relieved.

The whereabouts of the missing union boss is one of America’s most cherished unsolved mysteries, and I’ve been holding my breath ever since these snoops started digging.

Frankly, I enjoy guessing where Hoffa wound up after he disappeared from outside a restaurant back in July 1975.

Was he offed by a hit man and then buried unceremoniously under a freeway or sports stadium?

Did the Mafia stick him under a Veg-O-Matic and then feed the pieces to the fishes off Long Island?

Or is Hoffa hiding out in a rest home somewhere, playing canasta and swapping yarns with Elvis and JFK?

You know, that actually reminds me of a movie I once saw.

I hate to be a broken record, but some legends are far more interesting when they remain in the dark.

The fate of Hoffa is one of the juiciest tales of all.

This view flies in the face of our information-obsessed culture, I know.

We live in a world where everybody must know everything about everyone and we need to know it ASAP!

I have this friend who lives in a little cabin on a remote, dinky lake that most people have never even heard of.

The other day, just for laughs, I used Google Earth on my iPhone. Thirty seconds later I was not only able to locate said lake but take a detailed look practically down the guy’s chimney.

Nothing’s private anymore. And many of our best-kept secrets are becoming as exposed as Kate Middleton’s royal bosoms.

I once interviewed a Titanic researcher who told me something that struck a nerve.

Thanks to better computers and GPS technology, he said, the day would soon come when all of the world’s long-lost shipwrecks would be pinpointed, searched and salvaged for treasure.

We can’t let this happen.

We need to fight back by passing a Myth Protection Act.

This would make it a crime for anyone to use incontrovertible evidence or proof to ruin one of our federally protected myths.

I’m working on a myth list, but some of them are obvious.

Amelia Earhart, say.

Did the beloved aviatrix drown during her 1937 attempt to circumnavigate the globe?

Or did she make it to a deserted island after ditching in the sea, only to succumb to hardship and deprivation?

Don’t forget D.B. Cooper.

I decried investigators last year when they were examining a new lead that could potentially identify the Northwest’s infamous skyjacker.

On Thanksgiving 1971, Cooper parachuted out of a Northwest Orient flight with $200,000 in cash.

Then he vanished into history.

Fortunately, my fears were needless. The Cooper saga lives on and is celebrated each year in Ariel, Wash.

But one day the truth might emerge.

Some latter-day Sherlock Holmes could come along and put the puzzle pieces together.

My Myth Protection Act would put a stop to that.

Go ahead, speculate all you want. But any spoilsport who digs up Hoffa or discovers what happened to Amelia or identifies Cooper will be bound, gagged and trucked straight to prison.

It sounds harsh, but I’m pretty sure the TSA would be more than willing to run this program.