What is wrong with the title to this article? I’ll tell you; it’s part of a larger press release from Turner Broadcasting, parent of The Cartoon Network who recently ended up in hot water for a gorilla marketing scheme where they employed two individuals (maybe more?) to place 38 blinking Lite-Brite-like (try one here) signs of a character from one of their popular TV shows (Aqua Teen Hunger Force) around the city in various locations.

Apparently this really, really upset the city officials and some residents. From a CNN.com article:

But public safety officials, as well as a large segment of Boston’s older generation, condemned the publicity campaign as unthinkable in today’s post-9/11 world.

Unthinkable in today’s post-9/11 world? I’ll go out on a limb here and say that only the most idiotic, and oblivious terrorist is going to post blinking, obvious, lit up signs around a city for some larger diabolical scheme. Perhaps terrorists have adopted the methods of Professor Chaos. (I can see it now… ‘My plan is to place blinking lights around the city, confusing the citizens into mass chaos at which point I will rob every bank downtown, destroying the financial backbone of society, BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! SIMPSONS DID IT!!) Seriously, has it come to this? Now every nonsensical intrusion into your life is yet another ‘terrorist’ attempting to do harm.

We are a society living in perpetual terror.

And it sucks. Wake up America!! From the 60′s – 80′s it was the Russians; we had to watch out for those red commies. The 90′s started the terrorist fad. Now we’re fully entrenched in it. Everything and everyone is a terrorist. We have created the terrorist license; the proverbial get-out-of-jail-free card for any government who needs to keep their society in check. No longer can citizens disrupt with provocative adverts or descenting opinions without it raising the omnipresent threat level (CURRENT THREAT LEVEL YELLOW!!!).

Go bungee jumping.

Live a bit. Don’t be afraid. 9/11 hit home for me (literally, my father lives in Manhattan), and in no way am I saying that terrorists are not a serious threat or 9/11 was a joke. Far from it. I went through the terror, the anger and the sadness of the entire event. But that doesn’t make me want to stop living, or to stop others from pushing society to new and interesting limits. We cannot let a single terrorist act stop our lives, or change the way we do business, be that business commerce or be it art.

It’s not about the Lite-Brite, it’s about hair.

CNN:

Sean Stevens, left, and Peter Berdovsky are charged with placing a hoax device that causes panic. They told reporters they would answer questions only about hair.

(Video here)

And rightfully so. Because their arrest is ridiculous. Having people call in to question and notify the authorities about these bizarre signs stuck to bridges, not so ridiculous, but panic and widespread anger; ridiculous.

The take home.

First off, what does it say about our level of security when two guys in Boston can run around placing these glowing signs in potentially dangerous places? This shouldn’t be about punishing people carrying out a marketing campaign, this should be about saying ‘Look how easy it is to get access to these critical locations, where a lot of people could be injured if the wrong person was trying to actually do something bad.’ Not that I think we should guard every bridge, overpass or street sign. I think it simply shows how inevitably vulnerable we are. But, we cannot let that stop ourselves from living our lives!! Second, yes Turner should pay for the clean up, because it is their mess. But, they should not be fined or their employees should not be arrested for carrying out a marketing campaign simply because some members of society cannot handle the odd or out-of-place in their life. We live in a fundamentally different world than 5, 10 or 20 years ago. Not because of terrorism, though it does factor in. But also because of new generations, new ways of thinking, new technologies and new ways of working, marketing and living.

I’ll close with this:

“Just a little over a mile away from the placement of the first device, a group of terrorists boarded airplanes and launched an attack on New York City,” police Commissioner Edward Davis said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Right. Just a little over a mile away lurked a real terrorist. To attack a city hundreds of miles away. Who had nothing to do with an advertising campaign involving a lit up sign. Notice that he did not talk at all about the homicides that likely took place within miles of the location or the people who couldn’t afford to buy food that day within miles of the sign. Get over it. There are real issues that require the attention of the public services and communities in general which are much more important than some silly company’s marketing campaign. This is how skewed our public policy is. This is how warped our country has become. The rest of the world is moving on, living their lives. If we cannot, they will leave us behind, unwilling to put up with our relentless paranoia and terror of life.

The opinions expressed in this article are explicitly the author’s and in no way reflect the opinions of the other localoaf.org administrators, authors or readers.

UPDATE Here’s a link to an opposing Boston Herald article. (link)