BOSTON FLIPS OUT, GETS A COOL DEUCE

So Turner and Interference (bloody appropriate name for a marketing firm in this position, eh?) are going to pay $2 million dollars to the city of Boston because people freaked out about a marketing campaign.

Well, I guess that was cheaper than taking it to court.

But I want to know what's going to happen to the only two guys that were charged with anything, Berdovsky and Stevens. They were charged with "placing a hoax device to incite panic" and disorderly conduct. By the way, I'm getting this info from Wikipedia's entry on this subject, the "2007 Boston Mooninite Scare"--my favorite part of the entry is this:

"Between 2 and 3 p.m., a police analyst identified the image on the devices as an ATHF cartoon character..."

I wonder if that police analyst still has his or her job--for the analyst to identify the device as a Mooninite, he or she would then basically admit to watching subversive, terror-inducing programs, right? I mean, there's a reason ATHF doesn't air in prime time, see. The show's time slot is obviously geared toward the terrorist crowd, who are up late at night, plotting and scheming and attaching exposed battery packs to circuit boards for--advertising campaigns.

There oughta be a law--and there is!

The charge of "placing a hoax device to incite panic" sounds to me like it was made up on the spot. Does Boston or any city really have a law against that, in those words? Maybe they do, but it sounds a little improvised to me. Wait, they do have such a law:

"From Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 266 Section 102A 1/2:


(b) For the purposes of this section, the term "hoax device" shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term "infernal machine" shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically. For the purposes of this section, the words "hoax substance" shall mean any substance that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such substance is a harmful chemical or biological agent, a poison, a harmful radioactive substance or any other substance for causing serious bodily injury, endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both."

What was the next step in the marketing plan?

I wonder what the payoff for this marketing plan was supposed to be. Would TV commercials have begun to appear with the images that would then supposedly make people think--"That's kinda like that shiny thing I saw on the bridge today--it made me freak the fuck out and call 911"? As it turns out, all the marketing people would've had to do was make an anonymous phone call to the police and report a "suspicious-looking device" on a bridge and bingo-bango, millions of dollars worth of publicity!

Oh well, as long as they drop the charges against Berdovsky and Stevens, all's well as far as I'm concerned. Those two will now probably have their pick of jobs at any ad agency in the country. Thanks, Ignignokt and Err!

THESE GUYS ARE PLAYING IT RIGHT




They know the cops have nothing on them. If anything, they've got a great case against the city for arresting them. I still haven't heard exactly what laws they've broken. They rightfully made a mockery of this whole thing.

Boston police commissioner Davis had this to say:

"“People can be smug and say all you have to do is look at this and know this is not an explosive device, but the truth of the matter is that you can’t tell what it is until it’s disrupted,” Davis said."

Are we to believe that some kind of post-modern terrorists with a sense of humor are going to encase their bombs in some sort of blinking Lite-Brite tribute? And put them all over the city in some haphazard fashion? I thought terrorist attacks had to be clandestine so no one ever knows what's happening until it's too late--you don't want to draw people's attention to blinking lights that might say "Hey, look over here! Check me out to see if I'm a bomb!"

A post-Gulf-of-Tonkin-incident world. And a post-Operation-Ajax world and a post-Operation-Northwoods world. It's a post-"Iraq has WMD"-world

This whole "post-9/11 world" meme drives me up a wall. It's used to condemn everything after the fact--i.e., "you can't be allowed to do x, y, or z--after all, this is a 'post-9/11 world.'"

It's just like the "we're at war" excuse the neocons like to drag out--"you can't criticize/protest/have freedom because we're at war and we can't allow anyone to 'embolden the enemy.'"

It's all very convenient for the authorities, isn't it? And yet people go right along with it. In a post-9/11 world, apparently, any act someone in power doesn't approve of (whether it's legal or not) can be condemned just because it's being done after a particular date on a calendar.

Well, you know what? It's also a post-Gulf-of-Tonkin-incident world. And a post-Operation-Ajax world and a post-Operation-Northwoods world. It's a post-"Iraq has WMD"-world.

In other words, we know that our government has, does, and will try to pull the wool over our eyes and fool us and abuse our trust, and not for our own good. In fact, it's pretty much always to our detriment. Why would we then enable the taking of our freedom to, I don't know, put up promotions for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, just because we've been told that over and over again that Osama bin Laden got the better of us? The FBI doesn't seem to think so.

AT LEAST SOMEONE IN BOSTON LAW ENFORCEMENT HAS SOME SENSE

So the Aqua Teen saga continues. This is just too much:

"I cannot state strongly enough the seriousness of this offense," District Attorney Daniel Conley said in the Boston Herald.

What's the offense? Advertising? Good marketing?

Thankfully the judge seems to have a good head on his shoulders:

The artists' biggest ally might be their judge, who "seemed skeptical of the state's case," in the words of the Boston Globe, and reminded prosecutors that they'd have to prove Berdovsky and Stevens intended to cause a panic.

Yeah, it's going to be really hard to prove that, since these ads were in 8 other cities and didn't cause a panic and these guys were working for a legitimate ad agency. I mean, 9/11 shouldn't be allowed to change the laws of common sense. I mean, changing the Constitution, I understand, but this is ridiculous--KIDDING!

And by the way, I hope the ad agency these guys were working for doesn't try to hang them out to dry--I'd be surprised if they what they did is actually illegal. And Turner Broadcasting needs to step up too and pay for these guys' defense. After all, TBS is still getting quite a lot of publicity bang for their buck.

ARRESTING ARTISTS?

So now the ATHF story gets weirder...they've arrested "an artist" supposedly for putting up the ATHF displays...I just heard Anderson Cooper announce that...he said "an artist has been arrested" or words to that effect. That's the headline of the story I linked to: "Artist arrested for planting marketing figures" (is that really "planting" something--isn't that kind of a loaded word?).

Not something you like to hear in the U.S., especially considering that these displays were harmless. I don't know if they violated city ordinances or what have you, but even if they do, I would imagine that such things normally involve the writing of tickets or the levying of fines, not ARREST!

This sounds like they're sending a message to the Freeway Blogger and like-minded individuals.

But back to the harmlessness of this act--this was a legitimate ad campaign for a legal product. The advertisers cannot be held responsible for people's perceptions of their ads, particularly when their ads (at least the one picture I've seen of one) don't have words, they don't depict anything that actually even exists. People are freaking out about ART and they shut down a city and arrested an artist because of it.

Buck Fush

It's like the situation that Sam Seder talked about on his show recently with a kid who was thrown out of class for a "Buck Fush" T-shirt. Seder's argument was that there is nothing wrong with the words "Buck Fush." And he's right--the kid can't be responsible for other people's interpretations of completely innocent words. It doesn't say "Fuck Bush," it says "Buck Fush."

What kind of country will it be when you can be arrested or cited or fined because someone interpreted your words as something other than what you said? Because that's the principle that's at stake here.

TERRORISTS FROM SPACE!!




So Ignignokt and Err scared the hell out of Boston. I saw this story this morning but didn't read it because it just said something like "suspicious packages" in Boston. I was like, "Yeah, some more fake terror crap that'll be announced all over the news for a day or two then revealed two months from now as a 'mistake' or a 'misunderstanding' or 'not a real terror plot' or whatever."

I had no idea that the ATHF was involved. I admit, I haven't watched the show in a while--but man, a few years ago, I couldn't get enough of MC Pee Pants--and now I'm interested again! So I guess the takeaway lesson here is that if you want loads and loads of free publicity, try to do something completely harmless that can get mistaken for some sort of terror plot by a populace purposely and continuously freaked out by the government about terrorism.

The campaign worked, though--I now realize that there is an ATHF movie coming out in March. Before today, I had never heard that and I am a fan of Adult Swim in general and Aqua Teen Hunger Force in particular(and Metalocalypse rules!).



But this article indicates that the ads have been up for two or three weeks without this kind of furor. As my wife just pointed out--good thing it wasn't a real terror plot!