You’re telling me the reason my 12-minute subway commute was stretched to half an hour this morning was because some trigger-happy homeland security bureaucrat mistook a Cartoon Network outdoor ad campaign for a group of strategically placed bombs?
Our city’s cool quotient is threatened enough simply by the existence Boston College without having to deal with costly, embarrassing government gaffes and hysterical outbursts of rudderless security mom-ism like this one.
Truly, the age of Constant Hypervigilance has entered its absurd, self-parodic third act. I guess the cops up here eschew Adult Swim in favor of Law & Order reruns on TNT.
Attack of the Mooninites [Boston.com]
I assure you that cops, firefighters, and EMTs watch the Cartoon Network, they are not the out of touch government goon obverse to your edgy hipster know-it-all-ness. Someone reported something that they thought was a threat and they responded. Would you have rather been blown up by a bomb that was disgusing itself as an illegal and irresponsible ad campaign while emergency personnel stood around and giggled?
Really, Boston ‘bloggers’ should really try living in the real world for a moment or two a couple times a week.
Meanwhile, I almost wet myself when I read about BC ruining boston’s cool quotient.
The city that can’t build a tunnel right can’t figure out that a cartoon character made from a Lite Brite set isn’t a bomb? I’m shocked!!
Oh, the wisdom of the security minded. For those who feel righteous and proud that our fair city deployed its forces to attack a collection of Lite Brites placed on “major” infrastructure in the name of post-9/11 safety- it is a different world, or is it?
Surely not to dig at the noble professions described above (I live life moving forward, but if a nurse or a paramedic runs past me in the other direction, I’m right behind them) but a sobering reality for you- If these “suspicious” “hoax” devices were in fact incendiaries, we’d have been blown to bits weeks ago when they were placed here- and around the country. And given the condition of most of those bridges, it wouldn’t have taken much to topple them, oh dear…
The $2m Turner paid today will surely recoup the cost of this exercise, though I don’t see anyone asking the Boston Globe or news stations to kick in for fueling panic in absence of facts for hours on end, or to explain
Because, we know terrorists will make a big flashing spectacle when they strike again, and they will, be afraid. I’m alone in this, but dare I suggest part of the responsibility that comes with living in a free society is the risk that people, from time to time, assault me or my fellow Americans out of fear of that freedom? Or even my audacity at being gay and American in the eyes of their God?
Didn’t you have to call “in” a bomb scare in the good old pre-9/11 days? Now, we just have to feel threatened now for it to count (which we dutifully act out on cue) And we feel threatened, all the time- because it’s a scary world and we don’t control as much of it as we’d like. But we never really did, and surely never will.
Ah, but money! In dollars and sense, I wouldn’t be dismissing the negative inpact to Boston’s image on this- since the “creative” economy (things like wacky artists, liberal know-it-alls, and dredlocked students) represent billions of dollars into our region’s economy, more than biotech finance, and even healthcare- doesn’t speak highly of our place as the Athens of America.
The nation has pegged us as ninnies, and assuring people elsewhere that not everyone in the birthplace of freedom and independence has forgotten those roots has been an ongoing battle.
I treasure life, and don’t wish to be blown to bits on my morning commute, lunch break, or god, a successful third date. But, I make it known that if such a fate befalls me (and I want the good people of law enforcement on the lookout for REAL bad guys so it doen’t)I’d fall in the spirit of my city, where I can vote, marry, and look incredulously to authority figures and say “explain why you did this again?” and know that the world since 9/11 hasn’t changed in some very important ways.