Terrorized!

Writing at Tom Tomorrow's "This Modern World" blog, Greg Saunders nails this past week's cartoon-induced bomb scare in Boston:

I really hate how 9/11 legitimized all sorts of paranoid dipshittery. It’s embarrassing enough that the people who make the rules think bringing a bottle of water to the airport is a security risk, but now it seems that it’s a crime to inadvertently frighten a bunch of fools...

The story, which probably most of you know by now, is that Turner Broadcasting hired an agency called Interference to publicize a cartoon show, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Interference in turn hired two young Bostonians, roommates who have made a sort of spotty career of hanging video art, and offered to pay them $300 each to spend a day putting the magnetic, LED-illuminated advertising signs around the city.

The signs hung in ten cities, including Boston, for ten days before the panic of Wednesday, January 31. After the two workers were arrested on a "hoax" charge, Turner and Interference hung them out to dry. Friends had to put up bail for them.

According to the Boston Globe, "...late Wednesday morning when the friends saw television footage of police blowing up one of the signs (they) realized what was happening. The friends e-mailed links to the footage to one another. About 1:25 p.m. Berdovsky e-mailed several friends and said the advertising firm had told him to keep quiet..."

The Globe also reported that the "suspicious device" panics "forced the temporary shutdowns of Interstate 93 out of the city, a key inbound roadway, a bridge between Boston and Cambridge, and a portion of the Charles River" but that the advertising LED's "were quickly determined not to be explosive."

"With all the loaded language," Greg Saunders says, a person might even be tempted to think these two young guys did something wrong. "After all, this 'device' was a 'hoax' that 'forced' the Keystone Cops to chase each other in circles while waving their tiny baseball bats at each other. Throw this guy in jail because we all know this kind of panic isn’t the fault of the people who overract to anything they consider weird."

In the movie "Borat," the eponymous hero appears as a guest at a Wyoming rodeo and congratulates the assembled cowpersons for their support of "The war of terror." And it seems from what happened in Boston last week, if one of the purposes of bin Laden and his minions in carrying out 9/11 was to impose a permanent state of fear and panic on Americans, he succeeded at least in some places.

You can't protect people from their own fear and stupidity.