Funnier than anything on Adult Swim
In the previous post about the Aqua Teen hysteria, Dave makes this point :
Honestly – everyone looks at this like its the police jumping the gun, but you seem to forget that the first device was found during daylight (no ‘Brite-lit’ action) under a bridge – a square with batteries and wires hanging off of it.
So, let’s take a look at what these “suspicious devices” looked like when they were the catalyst for a government-led and media-fueled panic attack :
A close-up look at the “devices” should have made it clearer that these weren’t explosives.
If these look like bombs to the Mr. Magoos that run the Boston PD, then why aren’t they using one of those fancy bomb squad robots to take the “device” down? Did these unlucky bastards just draw the short straw?
Apropos to another point made in the comments, it shouldn’t take familiarity with Adult Swim’s overrated programming to recognize these as cartoony faces giving the finger. As Scott McCloud argued in his book Understanding Comics, recognizing cartoon faces is practically human nature :
Yet, the Boston authorities, in their quest to act responsible, drove everybody into a frenzy. It’s an embarrassment that five and a half years after 9/11, we’re still so easily frightened that a bunch of cartoon lights can send our security establishment into a whirl. Homeland security has always been a joke and this is the latest, pathetic example.
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Go easy on them guys in Boston. Tommy Lee Jones scared the hell out of them in Blown Away! Wicked scary! The town has never recovered.
Durr.
Comment by Baked Bean — February 1, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
OK — that last photo cracked me the hell up.
Comment by CLD — February 2, 2007 @ 7:23 am
First, I think you need to separate the media exploitation from the Boston response. Was this used to build a media hoopla? Yes. Was it used to build some political currency? Most definitely yes. Was the Boston police response overblown? No.
Suppose for a second (and someone in the previous post’s comments mentioned this) that it wasn’t a flat square but a box filled with C4, with a nice big ‘FU’ picture on the front – a home grown terrorist trying to get attention and a last laugh. Had Boston reacted they way everyone thinks they should have, the cry would be ‘Why didn’t they take this seriously’?
Maybe you need to work in government to understand this, but once the bomb squad was called in on the first device, there was no way this was going to be a small affair. There is no one person that call up & say ‘Hey BPD, its a joke – stand down’. Once the governmental groups are wound up, it takes hours to bring everyone back – that’s just how it is.
Again, separate the political/media response from the BPD/Emergency response – I think BPD acted as it should have, and I think the media & pols have over-hyped this, but what’s new?
As a final note – I dig that these two guys are trying to act very hip and aloof, but their lawyer may want to remind them that MA just got a new AG, and the first female at that, and I’m betting she has something to prove – you might want to try a little humble pie & slip under the radar instead of being so self-aggrandizing…
Comment by Dave — February 2, 2007 @ 7:39 am
Its also quite interesting that people seem to want to rally around these ‘Moonites’, I guess its just hip and outsider enough to attract a crowd, but I think there needs to be more discussion of the utter disregard ‘marketing groups’ have for public space. Please, all these people with their signs – you are gigantic shills for Turner! Congrats! I guess the corporations have truly won when the government can be chided for doing its job and the corporations can be given a pass based on their perceived hipness…
This is not high art, its an ad campaign. Replace the ‘moonite’ with a Coke logo, would it be as cool? Frankly I’m sick of this invasion…
Comment by Dave — February 2, 2007 @ 7:49 am
Dave, I’m an Adbuster sympathizer, and you are right that hipsters should recognize the top-down nature of this “guerilla” ad campaign.
But I don’t think it’s very productive to the discussion of the law enforcement response. It’s an interesting but distinct issue.
To address your hypothetical directly, if the “threat” had been a Coke logo, this overreaction would be just as ridiculous. It’s a bit of a red herring because it’s neither likely that Coke would employ such advertising techniques, not that the average commuter would fail to recognize the logo and call in a threat.
But supposing they did, we would still expect that once the bomb squad identified the device and determined it posed no threat, they would tell the public there is no danger, notify the company that their advertising campaign was causing a problem (hopefully fine them), and move on. We would not expect them to bluster about Coke perpetrating a “hoax” and threatening to bring down the full force of law on their agents.
Comment by Cris — February 2, 2007 @ 9:40 am
“not” = “nor” in paragraph 3. Also, Scott McCloud is super rad. ZOT!
Comment by Cris — February 2, 2007 @ 9:44 am
My real point is that there are two issues – the law enforcement response and the media/political response. ‘Government’ is a multi-headed hydra, where one person recognizing that this is an ad campaign is not going to stop the machine – it will roll on and on.
The police responded to a ‘threat’/situation. Yea! We pay them to do it. The media/pols blow it up way past what it deserves. Boo! Why do we pay them?
And I agree, bringing heavy charges to bear on these two idiots is heavy handed, no doubt, but I also have no doubt that in the end (months from now, when it won’t make the front page) they will get a slap on the wrist.
Comment by Dave — February 2, 2007 @ 11:22 am
Yeah, they responded to a threat that had been present for weeks and which someone had posted all over his website on teh intertubes. That’s heroic!
Law enforcement response was very slow. If they really think the devices were a threat, then that long delay in responding to them is the real crime.
They’re all morans.
Comment by Bogmonster — February 2, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
Yeah, but at the end of the day, there are a few people in charge of the “hydra”. Once it was clear that there was not in fact a series of bombs being planted all over the city (which should have been pretty damn quick), someone with authority should have scaled back the situation and, more importantly, alerted the media that there wasn’t a terrorist threat. Instead, the people in charge got embarrassed and kept the machine rolling. Even now, they refer to the signs as “hoax devices”.
Furthermore, while I agree that the hysteria was media-driven as well, keeping the media well informed is one of the government’s duties. If the media freaked out, it’s because they weren’t told not to freak out. That’s why many of the terrorist response training drills that have happened post-9/11 have included media response as one of the skills that needs to be practiced. (I uploaded one such media exercise to YouTube last year that you can see here)
Well, make that a slap on the wrist and legal bills that will likely bury them under a mountain of debt (assuming Turner doesn’t pick up the tab).
Comment by greg — February 2, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
I just finished posting a blog article titled Mooninites in Moosylvania. According to Wikipedia, Jay Ward and his agent “crossed the country in a circus wagon, gathering signatures on a petition for statehood for Moosylvania. They then visited Washington, D.C. and attempted to gain an audience with President John F. Kennedy. Unfortunately, they arrived at the White House just at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and were escorted off the grounds at gunpoint.”
Comment by Thomas Armagost — February 3, 2007 @ 2:57 am
Greg, I don’t think keeping the media calm is what the Bush administration ever wants when dealing with their various chimerical ‘terror’ threats. Also, the local criminal ‘justice’ apparatuses often don’t mind having a reason to get worked up and justify their DHS-augmented budgets. That includes prosecutors, who love high-profile cases that (they believe) will generate easily public outrage. And that’s where the alarmist and sensationalist media come in. One hand washes the other, which washes another, which washes another, and back to the first; it ain’t a conspiracy, it’s just business. It’s a giant circle jerk where taxpayer dollars get spent, and advertisers get happy. No one loses except the taxpayers and the government scapegoats, and who cares about them?
Comment by Church Secretary — February 3, 2007 @ 6:09 am
Greg,
I’ve gotten the impression from past posts that you live in California. Great state, lived there myself for a while. I currently live in Charlestown, MA, and work in Cambridge. Last week, we had an incident in the city that didn’t cause one minute of panic, just a lot of frustrated drivers. That’s boston on a good day, anyway.
As a matter of fact, the first couple of these devices *were* removed by bomb squads in full protective gear. In fact the first one reported was blown up in place with a water-protected explosive device. Once it was clear that there wasn’t a threat of explosion, police were authorized to remove them themselves. How much panic was there? apparently, not much in boston or the surrounding area, only what the rest of the country has drummed up as Boston’s over-reaction. As far as reaction time, you can’t measure it by when the devices were placed, but by when they were reported. By that standard, Boston’s response was excellent. How about if I come out to your home state, Greg, and plant a bunch of electrical devices on bridges and overpasses.. only one of them is actually rigged to go off. Cuz.. man.. that’d be just hilarious! To all of you having a good laugh at Boston’s expense, enjoy it. Unless you live here, you have no idea wtf you’re talking about.
Comment by FreedomByChoice — February 5, 2007 @ 8:55 am
We take the finger real personal here in Beantown.
at least no one got killed, as with some other recent Boston PD overeactions.
Comment by mdhatter — February 5, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
Yeah, those terrorists are geniuses, putting those new high-tech bombs in plain sight with LED lights shaped as cartoon characters when they could have just as easily put a bomb the same size and that could go completely unnoticed because it isn’t put in plain sight and have bright LED lights…….what did I just say?
Comment by John — February 26, 2007 @ 6:07 pm