By now, the entire world has heard of the bomb scare in Boston that turned out to be a marketing campaign by the parent agency of CNN for an “adult cartoon” on the Cartoon Network.
Lemme tell ya: nothing – nothing – screams “We don’t have the situation under control” like a massive police response to a perceived coordinated bomb threat. Had this been the real deal, the city would’ve been in an uncontrollable panic, largely caused by the police and the media. The former were just doing their jobs according to the “security plan,” which seems more reactive than proactive. The latter were in an orgasmic frenzy, covering such things as police cars driving down streets and, when they could actually get a good shot, showing the bomb squad blowing the “devices” up. What’s really interesting is that no-one noticed these “devices” for a whole week before they were “discovered.”
Total cost? Around $500,000.
Number of criminals? None. Two men have been arrested for placing the “devices” around town, which they were hired to do by an advertising company, which was hired by the Cartoon Network, which is owned by Turner Broadcasting. While the marketing campaign was arguably ill-conceived, a complete inability to distinguish it from an actual coordinated, terrorist bomb threat is an indictment against the police; the media’s inability to contain its glee at the thought of things getting blown up (hopefully with a reporter near enough to have to duck shrapnel) is sick; and the general panic with which this was handled is symptomatic of the climate of fear in which Americans have lived since 9/11.
Advertising resulting from the hullabaloo? Priceless.
