"Officials were urged to take note of people dressed in bulky jackets in warm weather"

London's police force tried the "bulky jacket in warm weather" excuse to account for their murder of Jean Charles de Menezes in June 2005. Unfortunately, it turned out even that wasn't true. The completely innocent de Menezes, however, is still dead.

Police work is hard. Many police are heroes. Many aren't, because power corrupts, something so-called conservatives have no difficulty understanding when the subject at hand is social welfare schemes, but which they completely forget when thinking about big guys with guns. This is because most so-called conservatives are fundamentally devoted, not to the nuances of Burkean political analysis, but to the glorification of big guys with guns.

Posted February 2, 2007 10:10 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

These are the people we have hired to protect us, and they do that by arresting non-violent protesters and stunt advertisers.

We are so f*cked.

Posted February 2, 2007 10:14 AM by Lizzy L

I must point out two things:

1. The two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center originated from Boston's Logan Airport. And the City of Boston has been taking no chances ever since. Does that not make sense?

2. If you see a SpongeBob lunchbox taped under a bridge, do you assume it DOESN'T have a bomb in it just because it's got a SpongeBob cartoon on it?

Posted February 2, 2007 10:29 AM by Sara

PNH #1: I want to disagree slightly. Most conservatives are devoted to the idea that big guys with big guns protect us from something that we need protection from -- namely our own ability to make choices that they don't like.

The Boston police department has done other stupid, indeed criminal, things too. Including, if I recall correctly, arresting a physician waiting to pick up his daughter from a dance class because a black man sitting in a Mercedes in a suburb had to be up to no good.

Posted February 2, 2007 10:32 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Sadly for Boston, "Mumbles" Menino has never had a real opponent. (Heck, he got in by being the acting mayor when Ray Flynn headed off to the Vatican.) Every so often, one of the folks on the City Council (usually one of the at-large members) will make a quixotic run and lose, but so far none have even been close.

(In one of his other stupid ideas, he's suggested selling City Hall, which is right on top of Charlie's old Scollay Square, and building a new one in an area with very little transit.)

At least he's only the mayor of Boston; since several adjacent municipalities avoided annexation, he has no power in Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, etc. (Though each of them has their own silliness from their own city officials, of course.)

As for the BPD, read the Boston Phoenix's articles on their record with homicide investigations (bad), DNA evidence (bad), crowd control (they managed to kill a young woman with "non-lethal" weaponry in 2004), and so forth.

Posted February 2, 2007 10:35 AM by Christopher Davis

...I wonder how much one of those Mooninites will go for on eBay...

Posted February 2, 2007 10:36 AM by JKRichard

But then again, also from Boston: The Pixies. Lest We Forget.

Posted February 2, 2007 10:40 AM by ethan

JKRichard (#6): $710.05, at the moment.

Posted February 2, 2007 10:42 AM by Christopher Davis

A few days ago, on the way to work, I passed by a filing cabinet that was out on the street with the words free to good home taped to it.

Every so often in my neighborhood, someone leaves a broken television or stereo out on the curb for the junkmen to pick up.

There are about a half-dozen newspaper boxes outside the nearest subway station.

Now, if I'm supposed to cower in fear at a flat LED panel and panic at a lunchbox, what do I do with these things and their vast hollow spaces and suspicious wires? I mean, that was a three-drawer filing cabinet...

Posted February 2, 2007 10:43 AM by Anticorium

I am puzzled by the implicit assumption that the mayor can use the police as his own private bully-boys and actually tell them to arrest and/or throw the book at someone.

Is there no separation of powers?

Posted February 2, 2007 10:48 AM by Charlie Stross

http://slithytoves.sytes.net/~dave/wordpress/?p=1707

Posted February 2, 2007 10:49 AM by Dave Lartigue

I have no words for the complete stupidity revealed here. I will no longer keep NYPD at the top of my list of collectively stupid departments. Boston PD is really vying for that spot.

Posted February 2, 2007 10:50 AM by the angry black woman

Since I don't watch television, I'm puzzled about the reaction to this all around. I gather the discovery of the first device led to people noticing the others on the other bridges within a half-hour, before the first device was recognized as a harmless prank. I'm not sure that, if I were responsible for public safety, and I had this problem drop in my lap on a winter afternoon, that I wouldn't react much the same way. I wonder if we'd be laughing at the Madrid or London police if this had happened in those cities.

I think Mayor Menino is well within his rights at trying to recover the costs of responding to this operation from Turner Broadcasting. It's not like a city budget is unlimited. I do think our local officials could be displaying a bit more grace about this, but I don't think they're due the mockery they're receiving.

Posted February 2, 2007 10:53 AM by dm

I'm of two minds about this. When the first post was made it was the only souce of information and I was very much of the idea Boston was overreacting.

My wife, on the other hand, had spent the day ay home with the kids, and had seen only a little bit of news. She felt the PD had done right.

A couple points:

What does a bomb look like, and how big does it need to be?
The heel of a shoe, a bottle of shampoo, etc.

An unidentified item, with a cell-phone activated trigger and wires is attached to the bottom and/or the supporting structures of a bridge. Something to be concerned about, or not? Something you'd think is advertising? Particularly if the device is off and no lights are showing?
Bear in mind most bridges in Boston are in disrepair, some have been condemned, and we recently had a fatality from the failure of a single bolt in the ceiling structure of a traffic tunnel.

Remember, regardless of how it was done elsewhere, part of guerilla marketing is to push limits. Did they take out the apropriate permits to put up advertising on public buildings and structures? Then not exactly "Nothing Illegal".

Also, it was a big deal on the other site about all the phone calls to the PD.
1. What should the reaction of police be if they are getting a number of calls about strange black boxes with wires on bridges in a number of areas of the city? Should it be ignored, or assumed there is perhaps a plot (like in Spain a year or two ago when bombs were set off in multiple spots simultaneously) and take quick action.
2. According to the news last night, a friend of one of the two box-hangers sent them an e-mail saying (a la Orson Welles) that they were watching the city go nuts, and could have called in to say not to worry, but were instructed by the marketing company to remain silent.
So is that wholly un-responsible for the extent of the panic and over-reaction?
3. Guerilla marketing's job is to create buzz. No one really heard about anything from the other ten cities outside those cities until now. Now, it's on the national news. So, where did those well-orchestrated phone calls within a short period of time come from? And if, and I only say if, those were also orchestrated by the marketing company to bring the boxes to the attention of police and add a sense of time-pressure, then whose fault is it then?
4. As Sara @ 3 pointed out, the planes left from Logan, we recently had a tunnel fatality, and (like or unlike other cities, I don't know) Boston only has two routes in and out of the city, 90 and 93.

I am not saying there was no over-reaction, but I am saying it was not as cut-and-dried as it is being presented in some places, and that the marketing company and that likewise the corporate executives who planned this may not be as entirely innocent as they are being portrayed.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:01 AM by pedantic peasant

dm, part of the derision (at least on my part) comes from another part of the story not discussed in Teresa's posting, namely, that this publicity campaign has been going on for THREE WEEKS in more than a dozen cities around the country. New York found something like 40, Seattle over 30, Philadelphia a similar amount--and they just took them down and went about their business.
Sara, I understand that Boston --every city-- has to worry about terrorism. But a LITE-BRITE? When, by the way, according to a poster on another blog, there was a billboard WITH THE SAME IMAGE along one of the heaviest trafficked highways in the city? Don't they have any 20-somethings cops in the police department? Heck, I'm fifty and I recognized the image immediately. Of course, that might be because I do watch Cartoon Network...

Posted February 2, 2007 11:03 AM by Emma

dm: the important difference is that London has had a very large number of real terrorist bomb attacks (funded by, ironically, people from Boston; shame no tough-talking mayor threw the book at those guys back in the 1980s when they were blowing the limbs off teenagers in burger bars) and Boston hasn't had any.
And Boston doesn't get to indulge in senseless terrorist hysteria just because ten guys with knives took off from Logan Airport one fine September morning. These LED devices have been put in cities that are actually consumers (rather than backers) of terrorism, like Atlanta and New York, and somehow mass panic was avoided. And, key point here, Turner actually told Boston PD where they were; I suppose the message just didn't filter through. This was a Boston screwup the whole way.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:09 AM by ajay

The link to what a real bomb looks like gets me a "Forbidden" response when I try to click on it.

Try this link, then go to Page 19.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:09 AM by James D. Macdonald

Regardless of the Lite-Brite things, the kid in the Abu Ghraib costume so obviously wasn't a bomber or making a bomb threat that the charge boggles the mind.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:11 AM by James D. Macdonald

Charlie @ #10: The Commissioner of Police in Boston, as the first Google result indicates, is appointed by the Mayor. This is a desparately-poor-judgment issue, not a separation-of-power issue.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:12 AM by Kate Nepveu

My experience is very similar to Pedantic Peasant's.

Looking at some of the other posts, I think you have to step out of the position of omniscience-through-hindsight and put yourself into a few different pairs of shoes before casting judgment.

For example,

1) The poor MBTA-schlub who notices a blinking electronic box under a bridge, and wonders what sort of thing gets stuck to bridges.

2) Some person sitting in an office, far away from the scene, who gets a phone call about a weird thing stuck to a bridge. As the news goes out on the police band radio and people start looking for them, this person then gets several more calls in the next twenty minutes as more of these things are found on other bridges in the city.

The person in (1) might have recognized the thing as a likely prank, but didn't. The person in (2) is operating on little more than rumor --- that person isn't at the scene.

Since the National Guard draws heavily from these people, some of them have friends who are facing real IEDs every day. In Boston, some of them probably know someone who knows someone who knows too much about the IRA's own "IEDs", and not in a good way.

I'm glad I wasn't person (2). But if I were, I'd hope that I'd have a bit more grace and humor as I pursued Turner Broadcasting's marketing department.

It doesn't matter that the publicity campaign has been going on for several weeks. person (1) noticed the damned thing yesterday. That person didn't think, "Oh, that's been there for weeks", they thought, "What the hell is that?", and called for someone to investigate. In response to that call, lots of other people started looking at bridges and all of a sudden it was a movement.

And, of course, we have those "If you see a strange unattended package, please report it" announcements on the T.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:13 AM by dm

According to the Boston Globe, Menino has claimed that Michael Chertoff called him up to congratulate the city for "acting responsibly." I can't begin to express my sense of shame right now. (It's pointless to make the distinction that I live just outside of Boston.) I fail to see what is so responsible about continuing to propagate fear and panic after they knew that there was nothing to worry about.

The same article says that Turner has chosen to take responsibility for this and compensate the city of Boston the costs for the operation which it should have never undertaken in the first place.

At worst, the city should have treated it like the two fake pipe bombs that it, coincidentally, found at around the same time. i.e., they quickly determined they were fake and didn't amp up the terror. The Herald article I read (via BoingBoing) said that they had identified someone but haven't charged anyone with a crime yet.

At best, Boston should have behaved like the other 9 cities: recognized that these LED signs were nothing to get upset about, then moved on to more important matters.

(What I did find weird is that after we knew how harmless these signs were, police in the other nine cities started to take the signs down. Why?)

BTW, a comment about the arguments made in favor of the police reaction:

Most of the arguments in favor of what the police did are based on the notion "well, they didn't know what they had." As near as I can tell, they figured it out relatively quickly. "They didn't know what they had", at best, covers the first half hour of their reaction. It doesn't cover the entire day. Also, if they want to avoid playing into the hands of those who commit hoax, they should avoid raising panic until there is something to panic about. (That these people had no intent to hoax just makes it look worse for the Boston Police.)

Another argument in favor of the police reaction relies on the strawman that people object to any reaction from the police in this case. No one is saying that the police should not have gotten involved. No one is saying they shouldn't have sent the bomb squad. What those deriding the police are saying is that once they realized there was no threat, they should have stood down rather than continuing to behave as if there were some palpable threat.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:15 AM by JC

#10 Charlie Stross, the police are a part of the Executive Branch here in the US. So, no, there is no wall between the Executive and the Police. (Although, in my Village, the mayor has little power, but that makes for a hydra-headed chain of command). Arresting people, yeah, unless they have a Chief of Police who can control the Mayor. He can prosecute them as well (although the Boston Prosecutor seems to at least have a brain). Convict them automatically? No, he can't do that.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:16 AM by Steve Buchheit

I must point out two things:

1. The two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center originated from Boston's Logan Airport. And the City of Boston has been taking no chances ever since. Does that not make sense?

overreaction and fanning the flames of panic are just as bad as underreaction and doing nothing. Both are a sign of incompetence at the political level. Does THAT not make sense?

2. If you see a SpongeBob lunchbox taped under a bridge, do you assume it DOESN'T have a bomb in it just because it's got a SpongeBob cartoon on it?

Good grief. That isn't the problem. I don't know how many times this has to be said. THAT ISN"T THE PROBLEM. The problem was that it took WAY TOO LONG to figure out that the calls about "bombs" were actually litebrites. It took WAY TOO LONG to figure out it was a FALSE ALARM. That shows incompetence.

Does that make sense to you?

And AFTER IT WAS IDENTIFIED AS A FALSE ALARM, further incompetence was shown by the political arm by fanning the flames of panic to cover up their own overreaction. To justify the complete idiocy of shutting down a city for a day, they have to continue the propaganda that these litebrites were "bomb like devices", that this was some kind of "hoax" and the INTENT was to cause a bomb scare publicity stunt. No. It doesn't look like a bomb. No. It wasn't meant to cause a bomb scare. No. It wasn't mistaken for a bomb in any other city in the country.

But by continuing the ministry of truth language they can paint this as if their response was a competent response to be expected of any other city. IT WAS NOT. Does THAT make sense?

Posted February 2, 2007 11:18 AM by Greg London

dm@20:

So, what do you think I should have done about the filing cabinet I mentioned in #9?

Posted February 2, 2007 11:21 AM by Anticorium

Sara in #3:

To respectfully counter your points:

1. The two planes that were hijacked took off from Logan. The terrorists entered into the air transportation system in Maine. Perhaps Boston should, from now on, prevent any flights from Maine from landing at Logan?

2. I would expect that any object, regardless of decoration, taped underneath a bridge, should provoke a different response than one placed in plain sight that is obviously meant to be seen.

I have no problem with taking all due caution. I'm a New Yorker; twice a day I ride a train in a tunnel beneath the East River. But I would expect, as soon as the lack of an immediate threat is established, that the authorities step back and examine the situation critically, instead of leaping to further and more dramatic conclusions.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:22 AM by Sternel

[wincing in Massachusetts]

I think some slack could be given for the fact that it was much less obvious what the things were in daylight, but as soon as those in charge realized it was a stupid gimmick they should have tried to have a sense of humor about the whole thing. At least it had some small value as a good drill.

Menino rather infamously has *no* sense of humor. I'm saddened that it also seems to be true of Deval Patrick )-:

OTOH, feebly reaching for reasons to feel less lame about Beantown:
Wisconsin investigates a suspicious-looking umbrella stand
Florida evacuates marine park because of suspcious-looking dolphin toy

I guess what's really worrisome is the extent to which the FUD has overridden any sort of even rudimentary common sense.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:23 AM by Suzanne

Yeah, Patrick is the big loser here. To think there was so much hope and energy after his election three months ago. Now he looks like a chump.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:28 AM by Jon Meltzer

What panic?

They blocked the roads that would be affected were these things really bombs until they identified the things. Once they were recognized as harmless, they took down the roadblocks. It was over in about a half hour, save for the Monday-morning quarterbacking, the embarassment and the media churn.

Anticorum: was the file-cabinet fastened to the bottom of a bridge? Did you find there were similar cabinets on a few other bridges before you had a chance to investigate the first one? If not, I wouldn't worry about it.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:34 AM by dm

For pete's sake. No one is saying that the police should ignore a 911 call from a panicked civlian who thinks he sees a bomb. Yes, bombs can be hidden in a show. Anything the size of a grapefruit or bigger could do some serious damage if its got some explosives in it. Yes, if the police get a 911 call for a bomb, they must respond.

The incompetence that is being criticized is after the call. (1) the delay from 911 call to determining it was a false alarm was too long and (2) the government's response after it was identified as a false alarm was to encourage and reward panic.

the time from 911 call to identifying it as a falses alarm seems way too long. If it had been a real device it might have been detonated during the delay. Now, it might be that the first patrol officer who pulled up took one look at the thing and started laughing, but the incompetence is in the system that prevented him from making teh decision to call it a false alarm and have everyone stand down. The incompetence is in the system that demands top-down decisions.

And the time delay I'm talking about is the time from 911 call to the point where the city as a whole knew it was a false alarm.

Yes, the media is to blame for some of that. But the city certainly didn't help. Once the thing was identified as a false alarm, the city appeared to be more interested in covering its ass than in establishing calm to a nonthreat. If it were a nonthreat, then they'd have to explain why the city was shut down and why every three letter acronym in the country was activated.

If instead they continue to use panic-inducing phrases like "bomb like device" and "hoax" (which implies the intent was to look like a bomb), then it JUSTIFIES THEIR INCOMPETENT RESPONSE.

The city encouraged people to panic so that the government's panic doesn't make it look stupid.

So, one more time, the complaint is not that the police should IGNORE a 911 call from a civilian about a possible bomb. The complaint is what happened after that initial response.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:34 AM by Greg London

How, exactly, is ATHF a "failing" show? They're making a movie! DVD sets go to multiple printings! It's certainly not my favorite CN show (not even my favorite Williams Street show), but calling it failing is just stupid.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:39 AM by BSD

Sara, as soon as I shut the front door behind me, it occurred to me that I should have mentioned NYC not panicking. DC didn't panic either. And since I understand that Logan Airport's security is still subpar, I'm not inclined to credit the city with a post-9/11 desire to never let that happen again.

Could the Mooninites have been explosive devices? Once you've seen both sides of one -- which they had -- the answer is "no." Contrary to the bizarre imaginings of DHS concerning eyedrops, perfume, and roll-on deodorant, explosives actually have some mass, and in most cases they're attached to recognizable detonators.

Since someone has obligingly put a Mooninite up for sale on eBay (thank you, Christopher Davis), we can all get another look at their actual construction. The one on eBay differs from the ones I've seen in photos from Boston in that it has black plastic covering its batteries. Perhaps the ones photographed in Boston originally had black plastic over theirs, too.

There are two ways to analyze this. One is that as soon as you gingerly peel back the plastic and find that the space it covers is filled with standard flashlight batteries, you have to figure it's either an incredibly clever bomb built to exacting tolerances so that it will look like and function as a blinkylight advertising device; or it's not a bomb at all, because explosives have mass, and (setting aside the "Q's latest toy" scenario) all the mass is accounted for by non-explosive components. (Note: the "incredibly high-tech trompe l'oeil bomb scenario" makes no sense at all. I just included it for completeness.) The other way to analyze the object is that if you know that they've already been up and running for some time, that plastic-covered blob at the bottom has to be batteries.

I have to ask: what happened to all that special anti-terrorist equipment and training our tax monies supposedly financed? Did Boston not get a single explosive-sniffing dog or machine?

It's been determined that Turner and their advertising agency got official legal permission to put up the Mooninites in every other city where they appeared. I have yet to hear yea or nay on that question regarding Boston, but until I do, I'm not going to assume that they were put up illegally.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:48 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Did Boston not get a single explosive-sniffing dog or machine?

I think it got spent putting an anti-aircraft defense system around the world's biggest ball of twine and other "landmarks" across the nation.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:51 AM by Greg London

I'd just like to say that I am already sick to death of hearing people whine that "the 9/11 planes took off from Boston, so we're being supercautious." Hello, you're talking to New Yorkers.

Don't you think New York is a little on edge after 9/11? Maybe we're just used to being on edge, because New York is, you know, edgier than Boston.

Or maybe more time has passed since 9/11 for us, and we've gotten some distance. No, wait, that isn't true either.

New York had no such overblown reaction. If there was any panic when these things were discovered, it didn't make the news, much less hold up traffic. Certainly no one was accused of making a bomb threat and treated as a terror suspect.

Let me tell you one or two things about myself. On 9/11, I watched my office burn and fall. I worked on the 96th floor of One World Trade Center. Want to talk about where they took off? My office was one of the places they landed (for certain values of 'landed'). 300 of my coworkers, including 20 who I knew at least to say hello to, died that day.

The other thing is that I had never heard of Aqua Teen Hunger Force before this incident, and would not have recognized the Moominites in a million years. Looking at one of these things, I would never have thought it might be a bomb. (Sure, something with blinky lights could be a bomb. So could anything. So FUCKING what?)

Boston authorities were being stupid and alarmist about this. Stop trying to make excuses; all the excuses are pure bullshit. Merino is a fascist asshole, a coward, and a bully. Did I remember to call him an asshole? Yeah, I did. If he doesn't lose his job in the next election, Boston voters will have endorsed his actions in this matter (well, or been stuck with a choice between him and someone even worse...start recruiting credible Democrats NOW).

Meanwhile, anyone who wants to give that stupid excuse to ME will be cordially invited to osculate my hirsute posterior.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:53 AM by Xopher

And while I was ranting, Teresa said the same thing better, shorter, and more calmly. Not that I don't stand by what I said. I'm pissed off, and tired of being polite. I admire TNH's ability to be polite in circumstances where I...can't.

Posted February 2, 2007 11:57 AM by Xopher

What panic? ... It was over in about a half hour

Uh, this panic.

Mayor Thomas Menino has estimated the costs in Boston alone would be more than $500,000. Costs incurred by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, state police and the cities of Cambridge and Somerville could amount to another $500,000, officials said

If you spent a million dollars in half an hour for a false alarm, I'm sorry, but the only way to describe that is "you panicked".

Posted February 2, 2007 12:05 PM by Greg London

Seattle also did not panic- although it is possible that court judgements against the SPD's over-reaction to the WTO demonstrations and the "Battle in Seattle" movie being shot here may have schooled the Police management levels to keep their heads when things look a little suspicious.

It would be good if the BPD and Boston City Government were given the opportunity to learn from this experience, too, but so far it looks as if they are being insulated from the natural consequences of their actions, somenthing which is bad for toddlers and worse for power elites.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:05 PM by JESR

Xopher: And we've been grateful ever since that you were twenty minutes late to work that day. And that Chris Quinones was too. And that Michael Weholt couldn't get the fire escape door open, and walked away from it. And that Ellie Lang's neighbor grabbed her and pulled her into a sheltered spot when the tower came down.

Anticorium (24): IMO, that would depend on whether you needed the filing capacity and had some way to drag it home. But I take your point: we constantly run into objects of unfamiliar provenance that could be bombs, and yet we aren't constantly terrified by them.

A general comment: the reason I don't believe that the Boston city government is acting in good faith is that they were claiming they were "hoax devices" long before they could have established any such thing. They didn't know whether that was true, and they didn't care. They were making that claim solely in order to prosecute the persons responsible under the "hoax explosive device" law.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:08 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

#31 Teresa Nielsen Hayden
"I have to ask: what happened to all that special anti-terrorist equipment and training our tax monies supposedly financed? Did Boston not get a single explosive-sniffing dog or machine?"

and

#32 Greg London
"I think it got spent putting an anti-aircraft defense system around the world's biggest ball of twine and other "landmarks" across the nation."

I seem to remember that conversation and how most of the posters from NY felt it was so wrong that other places got "their" money (the appropriations were later changed).

And Greg, just so you know, I agree that the response in this case (Boston) was poorly handled.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:11 PM by Steve Buchheit

Well, if they reacted so quickly and with such vigor and determination to such obvious fakes, then they'll surely be on the ball when it comes to more plausible threats, right? And they'll quickly arrest whoever makes one?

Two realistic pipe bombs planted with intent to cause fear; responsible party not arrested.

Thanks to bOINGbOING

Posted February 2, 2007 12:13 PM by Kip W

(note to #39: In Boston, I forgot to say)

Posted February 2, 2007 12:13 PM by Kip W

#3: "The two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center originated from Boston's Logan Airport. And the City of Boston has been taking no chances ever since. Does that not make sense?"

I have absolutely nothing polite to say to this. The two planes that took of from your stupid airport crashed into my city killing thousands of people. Their ashes rained down on my neighborhood. I am completely. sick. and. tired. of being lectured by people from other parts of the US about how important it is to "take no chances" about security.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:15 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

To justify the complete idiocy of shutting down a city for a day

they'd have to explain why the city was shut down

To be a stickler for facts: Ummm? City didn't shut down? Workers already in city by 9am didn't hear a thing about it till much later in the day? Personally, I was at home and saw the news, and hopped on the T so I could get to work before delays got out of hand. But they never did, except on the affected Orange line. Yes, the rest of the T was running normally at 10am, with no announcements or extra security guards on trains, no searches that I saw, no nothing. (I mean, I was carrying a towel-wrapped lasagna in my arms, so I walked toward the T thinking of funny things to say to any nervous MBTA cop who might ask me whether I meant to blow up a building with my scary scary noodles. But nobody noticed or cared, and the work potluck came off without incident.)

I told my coworkers about the Sullivan Square non-story, and they all shrugged and went about their business. The evening commute was unremarkable. It was really, just -- not that big a deal in our day-to-day lives, except for the CNN punchline. The city was never shut down.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:18 PM by veejane

Steve (38), what we objected to was getting significantly less security allocations than Birdwalk, Tennessee. I don't think anyone in New York or Washington has said that Boston's security didn't need beefing up. And since presumably they did get some significant quantity of money, I say again: not one bomb-sniffing machine or dog?

Hey, come to think of it, I know Boston has bomb-sniffing dogs. I saw their bomb squad at the 2000 Boskone hotel, because Gore either had spoken or was going to speak there, and the squad checking out the hotel brought their dog with them.

Why didn't the dogs have a whiff at the first captured Mooninites?

Posted February 2, 2007 12:18 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The rest of you may have noticed that New Yorkers are just a tad sensitive about this subject.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:24 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I believe I've used up my posting quota for the day. I'll just end by noting that

panic leads to stupid actions.

If someone is in panic mode, I'll be damned if I've ever figured out how to get them out of it. Or even get them to recognize that their panic and fear is not reality-based.

The more I read from people defending a completely inappropriate overreaction and subsequent scapegoating by the government, the more I get that some people are panicky, that they see it as a perfectly reasonable response (they don't see it as "panic"), and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.

OK. Now I'm completely depressed.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:26 PM by Greg London

#42

Uh, to quote, "Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down Wednesday"

OK, that's my quota for the day

Posted February 2, 2007 12:31 PM by Greg London

Greg, I didn't think you were over the line.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:32 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Holy crap, I just read that whole article:

District Attorney Daniel Conley said. ... "Commerce was disrupted, transportation routes were paralyzed, residents were stranded and relatives across the nation were in fear for their loved ones in the city of Boston,"

So, if the city wasn't shut down, the government is doing its damndest to make it sound that way. Maybe so they can collect a million dollars in "expenses".

Ok. That's it. Done for the day. Really.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:34 PM by Greg London

#43 TNH, I stand, or at least sit, corrected. As for not deploying the dogs, I think at that point rational cognative ability had already taken flight.

As for the people in Boston and "you weren't there, we have to be hyper vigilant," that may well be true. But, just how safe do you feel this morning having seen that the people in the position to protect you, the "experts" not only didn't handle the situation correctly by identfying these devices as a non-threat, but then wipped you up into a panic? Let's put this in another context, how may murders, robberies, armed theft, drunk-driving crashes, etc. have been committed in the city last month? Are the police giving these real threats the same consideration and attention that they gave to this non-attack?

If I lived in Boston, I would be seriously pissed that those in charge didn't do their jobs properly. After all, they are paid to make sure you are safe and deal with these things appropriately. They did neither in this case.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:36 PM by Steve Buchheit

FWIW, I've heard that very very few of the other cities' Mooninite signs were placed on overpasses and bridges and other infrastructure that would make a security person's spider-sense start tingling.

I think part of what went on Wednesday was a cascading series of events that undermined a sense of proportion -- continuing discoveries of devices at worrisome locations, so even as the earlier ones got cleared you had new ones to worry about.

It wasn't until after 3 PM (the first device discovered circa 8 AM) that somebody from Turner Networks came forward to let officials know what these really were intended for, took responsibility for them, gave a list of the intended/actual locations. If the artists or the guerrilla media company had come forward sooner, it would have helped a whole lot, of course.

The actions and especially pronouncements of Mumbles and the rest after 3:30 PM or so I'm not inclined to excuse as much, except to say that I'm sure a lot of adrenaline was involved. Terrorists tryign to blow up your city has to be one of the nightmares that mayors wake up screaming from in the middle of the night, though.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:40 PM by Connie H.

PNH:

#41 makes it clear I went over the line in the first thread, and I'm sorry.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:51 PM by Anticorium

Even when a terrorist plot is succesful in NYC, we don't panic (yes, SINCE 9/11 -- British Consulate). I don't remember people panicking on 9/11/01. A building not three blocks from my home was hit by a plane, and while there was a moment of shock, I don't think panic would describe ANYONE'S reaction, including people in the hit building.

Hell. I get more hassle and trouble on the FLL or PBI end of a flight to see the folks than on the LGA end.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:58 PM by BSD

Why's everybody rolling out their tatamis and offering to commit seppuku this morning when the moderators aren't disturbed by their behavior? I mean, it's good that you're conscientious. We really appreciate it. But I haven't thought this discussion was going over the line.

It does have the potential to go up in flames, but normal civility should be enough to keep it running smoothly.

Posted February 2, 2007 12:58 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

A drunken truck driver running a load of lumber into a bridge abutment at 4AM can shut down morning traffic for several hours (this happened a few years ago). Putting up a roadblock on some of those same roads during the day can have a pretty significant impact, as well.

A roadblock for a suspected bomb, for the half-hour it takes to get the bomb squad and their bomb-sniffing dogs there to recognize it for the harmless toy it is, does not constitute panic.

I think we're relying on media reports here, are we not? The same media who get paralyzed for weeks by an American tourist going missing in Cancun?

Posted February 2, 2007 1:01 PM by dm

Uh, to quote, "Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down Wednesday"

I don't know about the Charles River -- although the train-and-cars bridge opposite MIT campus was functioning normally -- but with the original incident occurring at Sullivan Square, there was, in fact, one highway (partially) shut down. Possibly there were some brief shutdowns in other locations, due to the other doohickeys, but the big one was the 93 overpass.

As I hope this map makes clear, the Sullivan Sq. T stop and bus station are pretty much directly under the US 93 overpass. So, if you have a security incident at Sullivan, involving the overpass, yeah, 93 is going to be partially closed.

Now, is it a problem that 93 is THE main artery into the city from the north? And that even if you could get off the burgeoning traffic jam on 93, you'd get completely lost on the surface streets of Somerville/Charlestown? And that backups on 93 inevitably cause every single highway and bridge in the woefully rickety system to get backed up too, because we're a bunch of morons who don't know how to drive?

Note to terrorists: no need for bombs. Jackknife a truck packed with live chickens on the Tobin Bridge, and we will be laid low.

Our city and state officials have a flair for the dramatic, sure, but what pugnaciously self-aggrandizing city doesn't? That is what the copious (and large) grains of salt all over the streets are for.

Posted February 2, 2007 1:01 PM by veejane

veejane -- I understand that when the Mooninite was found on the Longfellow Bridge, they briefly shut down the subway, the bridge, and Storrow Drive, as well as closing off the lock to the Charles River Basin. (Since it's mostly frozen these past few days, I'm pretty sure that they weren't actually preventing that much river traffic.)

Keyword being brief. I also had some odd and lengthy unusual commuting that day, yet it was unaffected so far as I know, and indeed aside from seeing a small report about the not-a-bomb-probably at Sullivan in the morning, I didn't hear about the emergency gripping all of Boston, Cambridge and Somerville until I was nearly home that night... despite spending most of my time working in or travelling through there.

And yes, I know the danger in extrapolating from personal experience, just because I had no trouble doesn't mean others were having a swell time....

Posted February 2, 2007 1:18 PM by Connie H.

I'm a resident of a Boston suburb ( and a long time lurker) who uses our major highways around and through Boston. I think the media response to all this was stupid. But looking at how our media responds to the possibility of a snow shower, I'm not surprised.

I would add that apparently other cities did not have the devices attached to bridges, underpasses, etc. But that's really beside the point.

What all this shows me is how effective the current administration's attempts to create a paranoid nation have been.

Posted February 2, 2007 1:24 PM by Michael L

It doesn't seem terribly challenging to significantly impede traffic flow in just about any major city. A friend of mine used to be a traffic reporter in Montreal, and she claims she could shut down the whole city in morning rush hour with about three well-placed breakdowns. If she wanted to, that is.

Posted February 2, 2007 1:29 PM by Electric Landlady

As Connie wrote:

FWIW, I've heard that very very few of the other cities' Mooninite signs were placed on overpasses and bridges and other infrastructure that would make a security person's spider-sense start tingling.

I too have heard the same thing. From the press coverage I've read, it sounds like the Mooninites were put on private property in most other cities, or on train bridges that were no longer in use.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/02/device_location_was_factor_in_reaction/

If you're going to put advertising up on a city's infrastructure, you'd damned well apply for a permit first.

Also, when news of these devices first got out, the official word from Turner was to keep quiet about it.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/02/02/turner_broadcasting_accepts_blame_promises_restitution/

I'm not saying that the city didn't overreact, but Turner definitely owes the city restititution. They could have ended the panic hours earlier if they'd just spoken up.

Posted February 2, 2007 1:34 PM by Jennifer Pelland

I think it's useful to distinguish three (at least) phases of the response. The first phase, where everybody snaps into action because there is something suspicious happening, was (I think) handled badly, not because the police overreacted, but because their reaction would not have been very helpful if there had been a dozen bombs in the city as was presumably suspected. If anything, they under-reacted. Mostly, though, they reacted badly.

The second phase was them figuring out that there was no threat, and then cleaning up. It seems to me that this took far too long, but then, I don't really know anything about bombs.

The third phase is where, afterward, they learn from what happened. No, wait, this is the bit where they refuse to learn from what happened, and instead start prosecuting people under an obviously inapplicable hoax-device law.

The Massachusetts hoax-device law, by the way, was pushed by a bomb-squad worker who had at one point dealt with a rash of bomb-threats called into schools, some of them with some moderately sophisticated hoax devices, with clocks attached and all that sort of thing. They found the people who had been doing it, and then the prosecutor told the bomb squad guy that there wasn't a law to deal with that sort of thing (which may well have been false, from my understanding, but, not a lawyer, not a MA resident anymore, etc, etc). So this guy convinced the legislature to pass a hoax device law, and now, when people do (as they do) make phony pipe bombs and call in bomb threats, there is a law! Hooray! Sadly, it's a very badly written law.

Around the same time as the Joe Previtera incident, Davis Square was cleared because of a Bomb Threat, which it turned out consisted of an empty cardboard box with some political slogans on it, left at the post office to be mailed to the Republican Campaign Headquarters (or perhaps the Bush/Cheney headquarters, I don't remember the details). The fellow was arrested, charged and brought to trial because the empty cardboard box was considered a hoax device.

Heck, at least the lite-brites had wires.

Thanks,
-V.

Posted February 2, 2007 1:34 PM by Vardibidian

Here in San Francisco, we have bomb scares that closes down the Muni and BART approximately once every two or three months. This is inconvenient for us--but almost always it turns out to be nothing at all. Once somebody left a bag of groceries and laundry detergent too close to City Hall. Should the person who accidently put down and left their Tide with Bleach sitting in a plastic bag on a street corner be slammed with "In a post 9-11 world, they should have known better"? No, of course not. It's patently silly. Once the threat has been determined to be non-existent, everyone goes about their business. The police don't arrest somebody because of a false alarm (generally); they stand down and tell everyone, "Nothing to worry about. False alarm."

Boston did not do that. If any hoax has been perpetuated, it's been by passing on false information to the public about the nature of the suspected threat. It's been about fomenting a witchhunt.

In this country, we're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. We're not supposed to be scapegoats for somebody else's incipient hysteria and fear-mongering. Any time our government makes an error and then turns on us, manufacturing ill intent when there was none, they've failed to not only protect us from terrorists and tyrants, they've joined the ranks.

Posted February 2, 2007 1:47 PM by PixelFish

Photo: Not rocket scientists.

Talk about timely news -- Chertoff has just announced new security grants for American cities. Note the allocations.

Just when you thought the Boston story couldn't get any stupider, a couple of guys who couldn't make ice cubes without consulting a recipe come up with the "This is the fault of the liberals at Turner" meme. There's no use arguing with them, since their notions of "liberals" are significantly less realistic than a Terrance and Phillip cartoon.

I remain fond of the first page of Seanbaby's The nation that freaked out. I take no responsibility for the second page.

Posted February 2, 2007 1:47 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

As a Bostonian, I like my city safe. I'd rather not get blown up on my way to the office since it makes for a rather crappy work day to arrive in 300 pieces. Then again, considering the nasty tempers of the other drivers on the road and the lack of street signs, any commute within the immediate area is always a challenge with or without Mooninites hanging from the bridges. ;-)

I think the initial response of checking into the first mysterious object report should have been taken very seriously. Any other response would have been inappropriate. After a cursory inspection of the object, I think the LED sign could have easily been determined to be nothing dangerous or explosive. As more reports were made, I think any logical person could have ascertained that this was some kind of marketing gimmick or promotion. It would have helped if the character was recognizable by the people investigating, spotting, or reporting the LED signs. All in all, the response was overkill since the bomb squad did not need to check out each and every unit found.

Once the news got a hold of the story, panic ensued. This is a reasonable response since the unofficial tag line for Fox News in Boston is "IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS!" However, to be fair, it wasn’t just Fox News that aired bomb scare reports – this was done by ALL of the stations and the information was released by the POLICE. If it wasn’t released by the police, they should have been on the air calming people’s nerves by denying the bomb scare reports.

This is not to say that Turner should be cleared from any wrong doing, nor am I implying that the marketing guy and the artist should be let go without being reprimanded. Here’s the thing, this was a dumb ad campaign. It was poorly designed, poorly planned, poorly implemented, and poorly promoted. Most people who saw those little signs had no idea what they referred to. Who would even think that a lit LED figure flipping the bird would have anything to do with children? This is a case of bad judgment. No wonder the show is failing, especially with that kind of promotion!

Who hires these people? Why do they think anyone would even care? Why would they think this was a good promotion since it went UNNOTICED in nearly every city? Or maybe that’s the key – only one city had to notice; only one city had to put the signs in the spotlight.

Maybe this was EXACTLY the type of response the client wanted since now we all know that there is a really bad carton show called “Aqua Teens” on the Cartoon Network. If Boston hadn’t noticed the LED figures, Turner’s money would have been wasted. The Boston police may have spent a million dollars investigating the signs, but I’d guarantee you that the Cartoon Network has seen a jump in ratings on that formerly obscure cartoon show.

Posted February 2, 2007 1:56 PM by Erin Underwood

Erin Underwood 63: Who would even think that a lit LED figure flipping the bird would have anything to do with children?

Um...WHAT? Two words: Adult Swim.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:02 PM by Xopher

Xopher - I think this proves that even with all the publicity this has been getting, it's still a failed advertising campaign.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:05 PM by Jennifer Pelland

If those three hours Turner waited to call don't represent their organization frantically checking the legal situation, getting their ducks in a row, and formulating a response, I'll eat one of my hats. I don't think we can blame Turner for not wanting to jump unprepared into the kind of mess that had blown up in Boston. I wouldn't have done it either.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:14 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I think the advertising campaign was pretty stupid too. The issue here is that the Boston Police seem to think that the advertising campaign was criminal. If they didn't get permission to put up the signs, then they should be charged for that, not terrorism. If they did get permission, then it's hard to avoid the notion they're being charged solely to justify the reactions of Boston officials.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:16 PM by JC

I think the 'THIS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS' political response came mostly from the assumption that the faux pipe bombs had something to do with the lite brites.

But once they realized the faux pipe bombs had nothing to do with the lite brites... Feh.

Btw, having read the 64 comments so far, I obviously do think that there's a big difference between a city that had an actual trauma happen to it and a city that watched in dismay while awful things happened to other cities. I have a whimsical kind of fondness for the idea that Boston (particularly the polticians) may have some weird version of survivor's guilt. None of which, I hasten to add, means that the response was proportionate or reasonable.

Nor is the Boston Police Department any good. I focus mostly on the rate of solving murders, when I say that, but the Previtera case is a great example of the problem. (And THAT problem, of using terrorism as an excuse for authoritarian crackdowns, is (obviously) nationwide.)

Posted February 2, 2007 2:18 PM by kate

Vardibidian @ 60

Even if the devices were not placed with the initial intent of being bombs, there are three other factors:

First, as someone partially posted earlier, there was another bomb threat simultaneous with this one () which made the emergency officials wonder if the cartoon devices were related and intended as a ditraction. This falls, at some level, under the same rule as the school or prank-calling 911, that the devices pull resources from where they were needed.

Second, as Pelland and I posted, Turner (or Intensive, its marketing company) was instructing those in the know locally NOT to assist or inform the authorities. At that point, knowing your devices are a problem and passively letting them remain a problem you are hoaxing.

Third, I very much wonder if the reason the devices were suddenly positioned differently in Boston was a non-admitted ploy by the marketers to provoke this kind of reaction to gain a larger buzz.

Again, who called in the locations to the police department approx 20 minutes apart over a three hour period?

Also, at their deposition the two hangers held a "press conference" where they refused to talk about anything except "perfect hair", suspected to be a reference to another cartoon channel show.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:19 PM by pedantic peasant

Jennifer, it could equally prove that Boston is as deadly un-hip as its defenders keep saying it is.

WHY are people saying ATHF is a "failing show?" It's not Heroes, certainly, but it's on at midnight Sundays on a cable network often exiled to the digital band. It's watched by two out of three viewers at my house (I go to bed earlier, thank you), but then we're a bunch of SF and pop-culture geeks.

I have no idea where the Mooninites in Seattle were placed (except for a mural ad on a brick building on Third), and have seen no verifiable, concrete, evidence that Boston was unique in having them attached to pieces of transportation infrastructure.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:22 PM by JESR

Wait, what?

Pedantic Peasant, I was under the impression that the two artists/guerilla guys had in fact told the police the location(s) of the lite brites, somewhere around noonish. Am I incorrect?

Posted February 2, 2007 2:27 PM by kate

Jennifer, it could equally prove that Boston is as deadly un-hip as its defenders keep saying it is.

Eh. I tried watching ATHF and didn't find it funny. I guess I'm deadly un-hip and have thus proven your point.

I have no idea where the Mooninites in Seattle were placed (except for a mural ad on a brick building on Third), and have seen no verifiable, concrete, evidence that Boston was unique in having them attached to pieces of transportation infrastructure.

That's why I posted a link to a Boston Globe article in my initial reply--so I wouldn't simply be repeating hearsay.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:30 PM by Jennifer Pelland

#69:First, as someone partially posted earlier, there was another bomb threat simultaneous with this one () which made the emergency officials wonder if the cartoon devices were related and intended as a ditraction. This falls, at some level, under the same rule as the school or prank-calling 911, that the devices pull resources from where they were needed.

Are you saying that Turner is responsible for terrorism because they placed signs for their ad campaign several weeks before an actual hoax terrorist incident occurred in Boston? It still boils down to holding them responsible for an uproar which should never have happened, and did not in 9 of the 10 cities where they were placed.

It seems to me based on the first Herald article about the pipe bombs, that the police had that sorted out fairly quickly and recognized that it had nothing to do with the LED displays. According to the first Herald article I saw about this, the police identified, but not charged someone. So, it should have been easy for them to figure out that the LED signs were a whole other thing (since they determined that a different set of people were responsible for those fairly quickly too).

I find it interesting that no one mentioned the fake pipe bombs, at the time, as an aggravating fact. All we heard about, at the time, were LED signs. One would think that as long as they were going to tell us about "suspicious devices," they would tell us about a device that actually was suspicious. It verges into farce to think that they were accusing Turner of planting fake pipe bombs but at no point ever mentioning it when they were so free with every other bit of potentially scary information they could get their hands on.

Perhaps I'm being cynical, but this looks like a convenient bit of face saving to me. Having said that, I do wish they had handled the LED signs with the same calm that they handled the fake pipe bombs. There was nothing to stop them from doing that.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:37 PM by JC

Hoax News
We distort. You deride.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:46 PM by Susan Kitchens

You have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Just over 4,000 people died five years in terrorist attacks and that has the other 300 odd million of them thinking that their chances of dying in a terrorist attack even rivals that of being killed in a car crash (1 in 6,000) or plane crash (1 in 100,000). A lightning bolt (1 in 1.7 million) has better odds.

But, I see the reaction as typical. The media and government has used fear constantly in its messages to us, and it's worked. Exactly what Bin Laden was looking for, and the reason it's called "terrorism."

Being from that "other" city hit on Sept. 11 (D.C.), we've learned that there is a difference between vigilance and hysteria. At least I like to think most of us have.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:48 PM by Satori

"Who would even think that a lit LED figure flipping the bird would have anything to do with children? This is a case of bad judgment. No wonder the show is failing, especially with that kind of promotion!"

ATHF is neither failing nor a children's show.

I have no particular expertise in marketing so it's difficult to me to assess the cost of the stunt, though at a guess I'd expect it's somewhere around $1 million US to buy the City of Boston some new diapers, plus a few thousand to pay the guys who made and placed the signs.

It's also difficult for me to assess the value of the campaign, but I can say this much: I love the show, and watched the first four seasons on DVDs that I'd borrowed or been given as gifts. I'd mostly forgotten about the show, though. Now I'm aware that it's on again and running new episodes and there's a movie coming soon. Further, a week ago maybe one guy in five here at the office knew who the Mooninites were. Today, every last one does, and the DVDs are being eagerly passed around.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:49 PM by Laertes

Announcement: We're about to find out how much traffic you get when you're featured on Technorati Buzz TV.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:52 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Since my daily quota has been extended, just wanted to post some quotes from someone else's link

Headline: Phony threat escalated real danger in hoax

Phone threat? Since when is a LiteBrite a threat of any kind?

In reference to the two fake pipe bombs, they were called in on the same day: The "bomb call surfaced in the middle of a coordinated hoax."

"hoax"??? WTF? It was coordinated SPAM at best. No one ever tried to pass of the litebrites as bombs.

Boston police Commissioner Ed Davis said that the chorus of law enforcement agencies had no choice but to assume that gag devices had been systematically planted all over town as a distraction for “real” ones that had also been placed.

"had no choice"? That's an interesting spin on things. Turner made them do it.

The whole article is so much ass-kissing that the guy who wrote it should declare "human bidet" on his tax return this year. A complete government apologist, and a fing coward.

Posted February 2, 2007 2:55 PM by Greg London

Since the right wing media here in Boston seems to be pushing the "remember Logan Airport at 9/11" meme, we need to remember one Virginia Buckingham - the Republican political hack without managerial experience who was in charge of Massport (i.e. Logan Airport) on 9/11/2001. After her contract was bought out (for some reason I don't understand she couldn't be fired) she surfaced a year or so later as a columnist for the Herald. I expect to read much harrumphing from her next week.

Posted February 2, 2007 3:11 PM by Jon Meltzer

Ditto about the "failed show" spin. ATHF is by no means a failing show. Multiple seasons, DVDs in multiple printings, movie coming out--that isn't failing by any rubric I know of.

I also have a hard time accepting the argument that "the panic in Boston proves that this was a dumb ad campaign." Far as I can tell, Boston's reaction was the exception, not the rule, to an ad campaign carried out in some [thinks quick, counts on fingers] 10 cities? is that right, ten? So I have a hard time believing that anything that went down in Boston some three weeks into the campaign proves anything about the quality of the ad campaign.

Should Boston's current mayor win his reelection bid, I too will be disappointed. Unfortunately, I won't know exactly who to be disappointed with, because they don't later tell you exactly which citizens voted for the idiot. So I'll have to say, "Damn you, the greater portion of Boston's voters, whoever you are!" and keep it kind of impersonal that way.

Posted February 2, 2007 3:15 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Oh, and, an extra apathetic "meh" to the "how can this be for children?!" meme. I suspect the dynamics of this incident are influenced by the same misapprehension that dogs adult comic books: "It's got cartoony pictures! How dare you depict adult situations and obscenity with cartoony pictures?! Cartoony pictures are only ever for kids!"

There's a reason why the very first white-text-on-black-screen bump when Adult Swim starts up for the night says something like The following programming contains [stuff] that may be unsuitable for those under the age of [arbitrary age number]. That reason is, in my opinion, not because parents need to be warned that midnight programming might be too adult for the pre-teens. No. It is--again, this is just my opinion here, but I think it's a good one--it's because when faced with cartoony pictures, there are certain adults among us who immediately think, "Kid stuff!" So they have to be told, "No, you probably don't want your kid watching Harvey Birdman (Atty@law) at least until you've talked to them about sex, drugs, TEH GAY, and That Thing That I Sent You, About Which, Did You Get It? That regardless of Harvey's existence as a cartoon character rather than a live actor."

Posted February 2, 2007 3:23 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Personally I'm blaming
this all on George Bush.

Posted February 2, 2007 3:25 PM by Greg Laden

For all we know, Boston might have been the only city willing to play it like a bomb scare in order to promote the program in the national news. You simply can't buy that kind of advertising where almost every media outlet is covering the story. Not even for the million that Turner might end up paying. In fact, for all we know, the whole scare might have beeh choreographed with the payment made in the form of a fine so it would fly clean through the media. Otherwise, if there was a noticeable payoff to an individual, heads would have surely rolled and the backlash would have hurt the politicians, the cartoon program, and the programs' executives.

Posted February 2, 2007 3:26 PM by Dave Kuzminski

Just as a point of interest, when cities do their training and senario testing, one of the things that happens is spurious data is fed into the system to see if those in charge can weed out what pertains to the attack, and what is dross.

The Boston Officals just failed that test.

As for the language of "hoax" and "failed show," these are spin words gaged to fire up the local populace into not firing the officials using them for gross incompetance.

Posted February 2, 2007 3:57 PM by Steve Buchheit

I think this deserves a new verse for "The Mad Gardener's Song":

He thought he saw an IED which made him quake with fright.
He looked again and saw it was a lite-brite Mooninite.
"A hoax!" he croaks,
"Lock up those folks!"
His drawers befouled with shite.

Posted February 2, 2007 4:06 PM by Kevin Andrew Murphy

I, for one, welcome my new LiteBrite overlords.

Posted February 2, 2007 4:10 PM by Larry Brennan

Note: when I ask for documentation about what happened in cities-not-Boston, I am hesitant to accept information from Boston media which is not backed up from local sources.

I may be more than a little tender about Security Theater right now. I started feeling substantially more insecure when I learned that the Army no longer views past gang activity as a bar to enlistment, and has discontinued the gang related activities prevention program at Fort Lewis.

Posted February 2, 2007 4:12 PM by JESR

80: Nikki, I think you have confused two points that I made and blended them together. The point I made didn't site the panic in Boston as the reason for the ad campaign being dumb.

From a marketing perspective, yes, the ad campaign is dumb since most of the people seeing the signs had no idea what the signs were advertising. The brand image is weak at best and therefore doesn't correlate to a strong ad campaign.

However, once the bomb scare was made and the news began to promote the ad for Turner, it then became a good campaign since thousands, if not millions, of people like me who couldn't care less about Aqua Teen now know more than they EVER wanted to know about the show. The name Aqua Teen has been imprinted on me and that LED sign is now a permanent association to the show.

In fact, it is Boston's panic that gave the campaign its impact. Without the panic no one would have noticed or cared. Thank God someone made those phone calls that alerted the police about the suspicious objects!

Still, I don’t think the ad was well done or well designed. If there was no panic the ad would have bombed - no pun intended.

Posted February 2, 2007 4:18 PM by Erin Underwood

But if they're really Mooninites, shouldn't they be showing their keisters?

[#85: Kevin -- good one]

Posted February 2, 2007 4:18 PM by Kip W

Pedantic Peasant (69):

"Again, who called in the locations to the police department approx 20 minutes apart over a three hour period?"

I'm not usually this hardnosed about evidence, but this is the same department that dragged Previtera off to jail when both ends of the wires tied to his wrists were visible, and started calling the ad campaign a deliberate hoax when its perpetrator was still unknown, and thus its perpetrator's intent was unknown.

Posted February 2, 2007 4:27 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

One reason we can feel good about laughing at Boston's officials panicking and overreacting is that at least this time when incompetent officials panicked, no innocent bystanders got killed.

Posted February 2, 2007 4:41 PM by James D. Macdonald

#68: I obviously do think that there's a big difference between a city that had an actual trauma happen to it and a city that watched in dismay while awful things happened to other cities. I have a whimsical kind of fondness for the idea that Boston (particularly the polticians) may have some weird version of survivor's guilt.

Could we please not play the "My Pain Is Bigger Than Your Pain" game, at least not on this?

As far as Boston having no "actual trauma" on 9/11, I would like to politely point out that the two planes that left here had a lot of local people on them -- friends, coworkers, neighbors. I myself put a coworker onto Flight 11 that morning. A family that lived a few blocks away from me died. And yeah, I lost a few friends in NYC that day too, just to round things out.

So I guess I think it might be a little wacky to suggest that no "actual trauma" happened to us. Yes, the nature of it and the scope of it was vastly different from NYC and DC, but it was still not non-existent. I have a whimsical fondness for the idea that we should be human enough to care about people no matter what city (or country) they live in, to feel hurt when they are hurt, and to respect the experiences of other people without regard to how they measure up to our own.

Instead of assuming that Boston politicians are acting out of "weird guilt", maybe it'd be more obvious to suggest instead that it was just another case of entrenched cranio-rectal impaction, an oh-so-common affliction in politicians across the globe.

Posted February 2, 2007 4:53 PM by Suzanne

E. Underwood @90:
From a marketing perspective, yes, the ad campaign is dumb since most of the people seeing the signs had no idea what the signs were advertising. The brand image is weak at best and therefore doesn't correlate to a strong ad campaign.

I disagree. The brand image is very strong (the mooninites especially, perhaps moreso than the "core" characters) among the target audience -- nonviewers (like myself) in the target recognize them, and viewers who aren't reliable rerun-watchers not only recognize them, but get stoked for the (recently begun) "season" of new episodes. I imagine this campaign was VERY cheap, was seen by EXACTLY who they wanted to see it, and would have been an excellent marketing expenditure had the circus never happened. A superbowl buy, or a big NYC billboard with Frylock on it or [new athf] (white-on-black letters), would have been too much money, going to too many eyes that simply don't and never will care.

Sure, EVERYONE knows what Mooninites are now, but I suspect that pretty much everyone with the inclination to watch more than ninety seconds of the show already watched it, and this won't change anything.

I, for one, can't wait to see the bumper crop of [as] bumpers we get out of this...

Posted February 2, 2007 5:58 PM by BSD

I live in Houston, where someone on a local mailing list claims to have grabbed 2 of the things for eventual sale on eBay. Notable:
1) This person also says he checked with the police after the Boston fiasco got big, and was told that as long as the item was on public property (which it was), it fell under the same "abandoned property" regulation as spam signs -- free for the taking to anyone, and you can do whatever you like with them afterwards.
2) No one else has seen any of them here. Speculation is that either the city's spam-sign crew got all the rest, or that any others were similarly grabbed before anyone else spotted them.

More globally, I think there's a good case to be made that a significant percentage of the US population is suffering from something remarkably similar to PTSD as a result of the 9/11 attacks... and that our leaders political and otherwise, rather than doing anything to help, are cynically and callously encouraging this because it's useful for their own agendae.

Posted February 2, 2007 6:52 PM by Lee

Am I the only one wondering about the fact that it keeps getting repeated "these were put up in X number of other cities and no one noticed"? Because if I were doing an advertising campaign, that'd be the very last thing I'd want. I'd be saying, "time for Plan B, because even bad press is better press than none at all."

Consider the players. Turner's called Fox News the propaganda mouthpiece of the White House; Fox News doesn't like Turner much, either. It'd be a pretty savvy plan -- and marketings tend to cultivate that skill, so I don't think this is overestimating them -- if a cynical one, to suggest: why not use Fox's known paranoia to Turner's benefit?

Who's to say that the "people calling in with a panic" weren't from Turner, itself? It wouldn't be the first time a company has created an "anti-campaign" knowing it'd increase sales. (See also: The Tingler and its ilk.) I'd have been more surprised if Fox News had ignored the entire blinky-storm in a teapot. Of course Fox News didn't hesitate to jump: look, an "opening" on their nemesis. Here's proof Turner has no concern for people's safety or peace of mind. Milk it for all it's worth, boys!

The BPD might've calmed down after the first startled reaction. The marketing-me says that's when a few more plants call Fox News to cry OMG! terrorism!, and charge the BPD is doing nothing! Mass hysteria (err, no pun intended) feeds on itself, and the BPD got suckered: with Fox News brewing blinky-box tea at record speed, the BPD ended up stumbling overboard, blinded by the glare of national teapot attention.

Underneath it all: who gains? Turner, all the way.

To the rest of the country, his Network's thumbing its nose at The Man (an action Americans are known to adore), tweaking Boston (associated throughout the country with Those Stuffy Puritans), and he even has the "grace" to reimburse BPD for its naive overreactions. So what if that naivete is quite possibly the very thing Turner Broadcasting easily manipulated to its own ends?

Even more, look at the medium of the message: lite-brights! Classic remnant of a Gen-X childhood, a medium equally ridiculous, charm