Because we are too stupid to know the difference between an ad campaign and a terrorist attack:
Two men pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges they created panic by placing electronic light boards that caused a bomb scare Wednesday in Boston.
The boards depicted a cartoon character making an obscene gesture at passing motorists.
Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards “bomb-like” devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged transportation infrastructure in the city.
Give me a damned break. Charge them with littering- that makes sense. Creating a panic does not, especially since it was theidiotauthorities who created the panic.
jg
9/11 changed every… ah fuck it.
Dave
Hey, did you know who Aqua Teen Hunger Force was? That they have a movie coming out?
Job well done I say. I’m just pissed I didn’t see one of the mooninites around the San Francisco. It’s probably worth bank on ebay now.
Dungheap
This is luncay. Someone should report the prosecutor to the Board of Bar Overseers for this. It is inconceiveable, considering “intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons” is an element of the offense they are charged with, that there is any evidence to support the charges.
Ugh
Sounds like the lead-up-to-Iraq Bush speeches.
jg
I would think ‘our’ completely hysterical reaction to this event emboldens the enemy a hell of a lot more than questioning the authority of King George. I mean that in a Braveheart sort of way if you remember the scene where the king was worried about sending his son on diplomatic missions because he feared the very sight of him would just encourage an aggressor.
sidereal
Wow. Just, wow.
You know, if Assistant Attorney General John Grossman’s dingle were explosive, it could severely damage his thighs and innocent bystanders. I guess we ought remove his willie just to be safe.
Zifnab
HE HAS A GUN!
I don’t know why but I found this appropriate.
But seriously, isn’t there some sort of… I don’t know… crime they could be prosecuting people for in Boston? Is life so good there that they have to start making up bomb threats to give themselves something to do?
What really gives me the warm fuzzies is that they spent $1 million to spaz out over some glorified electric graffitti. And now they’re going to spend EVEN MORE on a totally frivolous legal case which will only serve to make money for the movie they sought to promote HAND OVER FIST!
And Menino can bit my shiny metal ass. Failing my ass. They were beating Leno and Letterman at one point. The ratings on that show are through the roof!
Bubblegum Tate
If you’ve got the stomach for it, go check out LGF’s posting on the subject. They have gone batshit insane (OK, more batshit insane than usual) about it. Members of the commentariat are insisting that this was a dry run by terrorists.
MM
Well yes, and if my aunt had testicles she would be my uncle. However she doesn’t and the Lite Brites didn’t have the capability to explode.
Using this logic, I am going to go home and shoot my hat. Since if my hat were to become a pony, it would really mess up my house.
Pb
I’m with ya, John–this arrest makes no sense. Therefore, I suggest the defendants use the Chewbacca Defense. Besides, if Lite-Brites are outlawed, then only outlaws will have Lite-Brites. Or whatever. Sheesh.
Pb
Wait. I recognize that argument. George W. Bush, is that you? Because if Iraq had had weapons of mass destruction, they could have used them against us.
Jake
Bomb-like? I thought bombs were sorta like being pregnant. Either it is or it ain’t.
This is just too fucking stupid. IF my arse were made of gold I’d be sitting on a fortune so…even though my arse isn’t made of gold I’m still a millionaire! Whee!
I notice that in the other major cities where they stuck these things up, people just took them down. Is there any chance this is all part of the publicity stunt? “Yeah, and then you’ll wet your pants over the “bomb-like” devices and threaten to throw us in jail and we’ll do some episode on it and people will wonder what all the fuss is about and you’ll get your cut of the gross!” The only other explanation is Grossman is a big giant puss.
My. Name. Is. Shake-zula, the mic rula…
yet another jeff
Well, the terrorist have learned a few things. Number 1, they can bring a major city to its knees with well placed Lite Brights.
Number 2, the people of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia are far smarter than the people of Boston….
Is there anything that, if it were explosive/exploding, would NOT mess up infrastructure?
In all of this, not one news story quoted Ignignokt saying “I’m doing this as hard as I can” while he’s flipping them off.
RandyH
And we have a new Terror Alert System, developed just for the occasion. Cute.
tBone
Laugh all you want, moonbats, but LiteBrites are goddamn dangerous. Have you ever taken one apart and touched the little lightbulb? It gets wicked hot. Now imagine what giant LiteBrites in a crowded metropolitan area could do. Face it, those dirty hippies deserve every bit of the waterboarding they’re going to receive.
yet another jeff
Moonbats? You mean Mooninites, don’t you?
Andrew
In the most shocking turn of events in the history of the Internets, posters at Free Republic are taking this in stride, belittling the bedwetters, and generally making sense.
Does this mean the apocalyse is upon us?
Christ, one guy even says:
“I’m all for a richly-deserved skewering, but IMO the press is not only sensationalist but complicit — and the State is not hysterical but terrorist. The State incites and encourages fear, and then holds itself out to the terrorised public as their only hope. It’s all about power. It’s not that complicated.”
It’s almost as if Hillary is already president.
BadTux
A New Yorker of my aquaintance said, “Shit, we got ATTACKED on 9/11 and who freaked over this shit? People who weren’t even attacked!” He pointed out that the same boxes had appeared all over New York City and after a couple had been examined, the NYPD concluded they were harmless and went about their business.
But I guess Bostonians are more gutless than NYC dwellers. I wonder what they’d do if subjected to a NYC cabbie? Probably shit all over their pants :-).
Vladi G
Hey, this is no laughing matter. I mean, there is shit all around us with wires and batteries and blinking lights. I was thisclose to throwing my clock radio out of the window this morning. Fortunately, I didn’t wet the bed like all of the poster over at little green fascists.
Actually, what truly is scary is just how much those the LGF dipshits really want another terrorist attack.
Should be working
Best marketing campaign ever… These guys set out to capture the attention of a few passing motorists and end up ON THE FRONT PAGE OF CNN!!! You can’t buy that kind of publicity. When these guys get back from Gitmo in 30 years, they can find work at any big name marketing firm
Richard 23
That LGF thread is comedy gold! Someone contact Something Awful. I don’t think they’ve done a weekend web feature on Little Green Footballs yet.
Some seem especially angry about the message “1-31-07 Never Forget” because it mocks 9/11. Whatever. Nothing else to get angry about today?
Richard 23
Oh, see also Sadly No’s coverage: Cue Yakety Sax [Updated].
caleb
jaime
I love how this is all Ted Turner’s fault.
caleb
Let’s try this again….
chopper
“no one can defeat the quad laser…”
Richard 23
Giggle:
OMG, BOMB!!! Oh, that’s my steak.
OMFG, BOMB!!! Oh, that’s my cat.
OMG, BOMB!!! Oh, it’s my kid’s lite brite.
Oops, my diaper is full. Honey, can you change me again?
Dave
You know what cracks me up more than the absurd overreaction?
The fact that the media has been blurring out “the bird” when the show the pictures.
Well ok, the press conference was pretty priceless too.
Jake
Hence how The Bush 2004 Spooky-Vision Campaign was so successful. I often suspect I spend less time thinking about terrorist attacks than some guy living in a town that isn’t marked on a Delorme map. When the Beltway Sniper[s] were making life around DC a little too exciting a woman who lives in BF, IN told me how nervous it made her. Hmmm. Multiple shootings within five miles of my house and one two blocks from where I work makes you nervous?
I still haven’t figured that (chicken) shit out.
You wanna trip? I’ll bring it to ya.
scarshapedstar
Blue LEDs now constitute a bomb-like device? I hope the FBI doesn’t see my computer, or my stereo, or my keychain.
Fledermaus
And therefore anything could be a bomb. As a matter of fact, and I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but there are a bunch of suspected car bombs parked and the street in front of my apartment THIS VERY MINUTE!!
Also there is a suspected turkey cold cut bomb and several beer bottle bombs in my fridge and . . . OH MY GOD there are suspected pipe bombs under my sink!!! Help police!
Wilfred
Go ahead and laugh. But all of you should be grateful to LGF since it these same people who soil themselves so that you and me don’t have to. While you’re wrapping yourself in some fancy designer sheets they’re pissing their homespun American cotton.
Every spongebath they take is so that you and I can be FREE.
Tsulagi
Hey, if Spongebob can destroy the moral fabric of America, only stands to reason a finger-flipping toon figure can blow it up.
LTimeL
Suspects’ post-court press conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx2ytr2Oyv4
Cheers
chopper
they soil themselves there so we don’t have to soil ourselves here.
Tsulagi
If there are any other people in that house also eating dinner, they should seriously think about keeping knives away from that guy. He could really hurt himself.
ThymeZone
Is there any way that we can just close Boston and turn it into a museum? Cleary the city can no longer take care of itself.
Boston is the laughingstock of the Western World tonight.
Tulkinghorn
Part of the problem was that after the initial over-reaction by the authorities, the local FOX News station was reporting constantly about the series of bombs being discovered around the city. This greatly magnified the problem.
Kit
The way I see it, the score is now The Moon 1, Boston 0.
The Moon Rulz #1!!!
The Disenfranchised Voter
Will someone please pass the moonajuana already?
mclaren
You deluded liberal fools! They’re not “bomb-like devices”…
THEY’RE WMDS!!!
And We FOUND them! WE F*O*U*N*D them!
This makes the entire Iraq war worthwhile. Here it is, liberal scum — proof at last! We _had_ to fight them over there…because if we didn’t, they would’ve planted…um…cartoon figures giving us the finger…over HERE!!!
rachel
So… Is Aqua Teen Hunger Force a bomb or is it the bomb?
Tom in Texas
It just keeps getting funnier.
Scott Ott at Scrappleface has come across the guerilla ad campaign Turner was planning to unveil:
Powerline, in their blind hatred of Ted Turner, bought right in.
Tom in Texas
Sorry this link works better for evidence of Scott Johnson’s inanity.
Helena Montana
It is now fashionable to blame the Boston police and prosecutors. I think myself arresting the people hired to place those stupid gadgets was an overreaction, but it was an understandable overreaction on a crazy day. It was stupid to hang those things in the public infrastructure without notifying the authorities first. And there’s still the question of the timing of the phone calls. The Bush administration has spent every day since 9/11/01 telling us to be afraid, very afraid–it does sink in. I think you kind of had to be here, dude.
Otto Man
Just saw a clip on CNN about this. The reporter was absolutely shocked that the defendants weren’t treating this as seriously as the reporters and prosecutors were.
Watching the Asst. AG describe these as “bomb-like devices,” I really thought for a second that even he was going to laugh.
The joke’s on Boston. These were in ten cities for three weeks, and everywhere else, the trash crews simply tore them down and threw them away. Only Boston got its collective panties in a wad. I guess not having the Super Bowl to obsess over has driven them insane.
Otto Man
No offense, but we had them here in New York, a town with actual experiences in terrorism, and still no Chicken Littles showed up.
Come on, Boston. You’re better than this.
dlw
I’m sorry, but I really have no sympathy for the dumb-asses who thought it would be clever to attach light-brites to public structures like bridges without letting the authorities in on the joke. I guess they figured they’d be told not to do something this mind-numbingly stupid.
I have much more sympathy for the authorities who, absent any forewarning, had to take this seriously.
Okay, the charge of attempting to incite a riot is bogus. But these morons should be charged for the cost to the city to investigate the boxes (which I heard somewhere they already agreed to pay).
I’d really like to somehow fine TBS enough to make this the most expensive marketing campaign in all of history, but we probably can’t.
jake
Hold everything.
Haven’t the people responsible for the Big Dig already done that? I also seem to recall they did kill someone.
OH MY GOD THEY’RE TERRORISTS!!
Jonathan
Take a close look at this picture from the Boston press conference. Pay attention to the hands. It’s freakin’ hilarious.
http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/8184/xlxw1.jpg
Jonathan
But these morons should be charged for the cost to the city to investigate the boxes (which I heard somewhere they already agreed to pay).
Why, after they investigated the first box and found it wasn’t a bomb, did they have to investigate all the other boxes too?
As has already been pointed out on the thread, in a number of other cities, including my own, they caused no panic whatsoever.
lard lad
Hey, if it gets more Americans to ingest the brain-twisting antics of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, this stunt will have been well worth it… truly, a cartoon for the time capsule.
As for the city officials of Boston, this apt exchange from a classic episode goes out to them:
**********
(In this sequence, Frylock and Meatwad have hired an African witch doctor to bring Master Shake back from the grave after he commits suicide as a practical joke, for reasons too absurd to detail here.)
Witch Doctor: “Now, please — read from sheets.” (holds up cue card) “I AM…”
Frylock, Meatwad, and Carl their dirtbag neighbor (reading): “I AM…”
Witch Doctor (holds up card): “SOFA KING…”
The Rest: “SOFA KING…”
Witch Doctor (holding up last card): “WE TODD ED.”
The Rest: “WE TODD ED.”
Witch Doctor: “Now repeat all — very fast, please.”
The Rest: “I AM… SOFA KING…”
Witch Doctor: “Faster.”
The Rest: “IAMSOFAKING — ”
Witch Doctor: “Not so fast… loses meaning.”
The Rest: “I AM SOFA KING WE TODD ED.”
Witch Doctor: “Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho… you say funny thing.”
***********
Sigh… if only the Aqua Teen perps had pulled that one on those damn reporters on Thursday, instead of all their babble about Seventies hairstyles… pure comedy gold, I tells ya.
neil
You know what I call a ‘bomb-like device’? A device that actually contains a large amount of combustible material, a device which is very often used to conceal bombs? It’s a fucking car. If they keep the case up against these guys I hope Bostoners call in a bomb threat every time they see a car.. sorry, a ‘bomb-like device’. You wouldn’t believe how many hoaxers I saw on the way to work this morning…
Richard 23
As hard as I try, I just can’t get scared of LED PCBs depicting cartoon characters. The urine smell over at LGF, Ace of Spades HQ and other places is a little disturbing (hilarious), however.
I just wish I still lived in Woodinville or somewhere near Seattle. I’d’ve gotten loaded and pulled one of these snappy signs down and it would be on my living room wall. Oh well. Missed opportunity.
As it is, I just got loaded and read these fear and anger filled threads full of people with no sense of humor and a psychotic level of paranoia.
I think it’s sad how many people who think the Bush administration and Homeland Security have thwarted so many terrorist attacks are just jonesing for another 9/11 to prove to the liberals (and RINOs and other assorted traitors) that we are all in imminent danger of being wiped out by Islamofascists. It’s got to be difficult to hold those two thoughts in one’s head at the same time.
Cognitive dissonance, anyone? I’d rather be a cognitive dissident.
Cyrus
I think you meant “insanity,” but what you actually wrote is only slightly less true.
The important part of this paragraph is not “public structures,” it’s “light-brites.” Bombs — well, they would not be put in clearly visible places in the first place, but even if they were, would not fucking look like a “profane, boxy-looking cartoon character!”
That, I guess I can’t disagree with. Once someone was dumb enough to call them, they have to take it seriously, and it’s not like they knew beforehand what was going on. On the day this happened, at least, while news crews are following them around and multiplying like rabbits. Now that the dust has cleared and everyone knows it was just a panic started by accident, anyone who still takes this seriously is just in ass-covering mode. If the marketers get charged with anything more serious than littering, it’s a travesty.
MrSnrub
Dave said:
An article in today’s paper said A college student here in Philly scarfed one up and tried to ebay it, but that ebay is prohibiting sales of the mooninites.
More stupidity.
The Other Steve
Hey did you guys know that RedState is the Premier Conservative Blog?
No mention of their panick and fear of lite-brite explosive devices though. Damn.
Richard 23
Sorry, way off topic. But in case you missed it, Rush Limbaugh has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize!
Congratulations and megadittos, Rush!
Krista
In my opinion, there was plenty of stupid to go around on both sides. Those guys were dumb to think they could attach electronics to a public structure without the authorities wanting to know just what the hell they thought they were doing, and the authorities (particularly John Grossman) were dumb to overreact the way that they did and turn things into a complete sideshow.
Zifnab
He’s trying to steal Al Gore’s thunder. Maybe Rush will run for President. That would give me warm fuzzies.
Bob In Pacifica
I thought people got prosecuted in Boston for important things, like selling books like “Tropic Of Cancer” or movies like “I Am Curious (Yellow)”.
Ron Beasley
Here on the Left Coast in Portland they found 49 of those things which were appropriatly gathered up by the graffiti task force not the terror task force.
Otto Man
And with similar validity, I was nominated for Best Supporting Actress this morning!
Nicholas Weaver
Even worse, just afterwards there was a real fake pipe bomb in Boston.
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=180349
And the prime suspect has NOT been charged yet!
dlw
I once heard that it’s fairly simple to get nominated for a Nobel Peace prize. I think any Congress-critter can do it. So this isn’t as odious as one might think.
Otto Man
And yet, Rush didn’t get a nomination from any of them. He got it from some conservative gabber.
tBone
Riehl’s response is priceless:
Take that, moonbats! Even if there is absolutely no way the nomination will ever be considered, or indeed used for anything other than birdcage liner, you can’t say that someone didn’t fill it out and apply the necessary postage to mail it.
Edmund Dantes
No, no they can’t. There are only very specific people that can nominate someone for these things. There are tons of self important people that like to think they can nominate someone for it, but they really can’t. It’s just a PR stunt. This is the same way we ended up with Nobel Nominated BS about the Doctor in the Schiavo case. He was nominated by his congresscritter who has no power to do it, and he claimed it even though it’s the equivalent of the Congressmen trying to nominate someone for a Best Oscar as noted already.
Please stop the insanity!!!
CaseyL
I th ink they just nominated Rush in a fit of picque becasue Gore was nominated – by people who really matter, BTW.
tBone
The Congress-critters see this:
and miss this:
BadTux
I hereby nominate Ignignokt for the Nobel Peace Prize. Nevermind that only people explicitly invited by the Nobel committee are allowed to nominate folks. Nevermind that nominations are sealed for 50 years. If a right wing talk show host can nomininate another right wing talk show host for a Nobel, surely a penguin has just as much right to do so!
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Jake
Is this where I make a joke about the Ford Pinto?
Probably not.
Ice on my fingers and my toes and I’m a Taurus…
Richard Bottoms
Chicken Little. Heh.
Paul Wartenberg
Some ponderments:
1) The judge on the case has already expressed his doubts that there was intent to cause a hoax or panic with this ad campaign, so the legal case for this incident may well be out the window soon. If the Boston DA wants to pursue this further, well then that’s his own lookout, because…
2) Boston is now a huge laughingstock for their mass hysterical response to this. There were 9 other cities that had these Lite Brites ‘strategerically’ placed throughout them and none of those cities overreacted to this. Boston did, Boston ended up with egg on its face, and now what you are getting is the wrong-headed overreaction by the politicos to prosecute some pot-smoking doofuses just so they can try to salvage their long-gone reps.
3) I will say this: at least Boston’s SWAT teams responded as swiftly and effectively as they did. They handled themselves going into this as they should regarding any suspicious device. The problem was how clueless they turned out to be when they actually saw the Lite Brites of Mooninite Doom. Yeah, there was wiring, and batteries, but did you guys notice the lack of actual explosives??? Sigh.
4) As far as ad campaigns go, this has now generated 10 times as much interest as before for the soon-to-release ATHF Movie. I mean, nobody really cared for the two weeks they’d been blinking out there. I’m buying into this conspiracy talk that one of the guerrilla ad guys called this in as a bomb threat, ’cause before it was zero interest, and now it’s massive interest. That movie is gonna open big. Except in Boston.
6) Mooninites t-shirt sales on Cafe Xpress should be in the billions by now.
dreggas
I predict a “duking”* in the future of this assistant AG.
*Duking – in reference to the Duke La Crosse case that came to nothing and was stupid, it was prosecuted by someone more interested in his own carreer than in the truth.
YellowJournalism
So when do we start bombing the moon?
“Meatwad make the money, see. Meatwad get the honeys, G.”
Ravi
I wouldn’t be so quick to let the marketing firm off the hook. It has already been documented (see the Boston Globe today) that they *knew* about the panic and told the people who placed it to keep quiet. Plus they didn’t contact the authorities when they spoke up… they waited a few hours and then went to TBS first (which looks odd at the very least). One rumor that was on local news was that the marketing people called in the bomb threat because they weren’t getting enough attention. Should that be proven, I’d expect jail time for someone. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the court case against the artists is more about getting leverage to find out everything their bosses were up to than anything else.
Richard 23
As far as I can tell, the rumor about the ad agency calling 911 to get attention for its campaign is just a rumor. It’s already known who called 911:
Of course that was yesterday. Now the Wikipedia page says:
The way it’s written it’s hard to tell if there’s cause and effect here. Did the MBTA employee sound the alarm or is this just extra information. Notice the passive voice: “Boston police received a phone call.” So who made the call?
yet another jeff
BTW, Rush has been nominated for the Nobel…just because someone is petty and jealous….
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20070201/pl_usnw/landmark_legal_foundation_nominates_rush_limbaugh_for2007_nobel_peace_prize
The Disenfranchised Voter
Just in case the rest of you missed it, the charges against the two are being dropped.
That didn’t take very long.
Richard 23
Embed your links! And don’t use multiple exclamation points!one!eleven! My bad.
Richard 23
Wow, exclamation points are really fucked up around here.
Let’s try question marks?one?eleven?
Just a test.
jake
Good. I saw a quote from the judge that suggested criminal charges were DOA. Plus, Turner agreed to buy a new pair of pants for everyone who was frightened. Or otherwise help pay for the costs of the Brohaha in Beantown.
I’d like to think the gales of laughter from around the planet helped bring the AG to his senses…who knows.
Number one in the hood, G.