Adult Swim: The New Al-Qaeda
By now, I'm sure you've all heard about that whole stupid thing that happened in Boston the other day. So I figured I'd throw my two cents as well.
If you've been living under a rock since Wednesday and haven't heard the news, there was a bomb scare in Boston. But it turns out that they weren't bombs after all. They weren't even related to bombs. They were just a guerrilla marketing campaign organized by Turner Broadcasting. An advertising agency had put together a number of LED placards featuring the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show that's part of Cartoon Network's late night "Adult Swim" programming block, and placed them in ten major cities around the country. They'd been around for two or three weeks, but suddenly someone in Boston confuses a homemade Lite-Brite for a bomb and things go crazy.
Look at that picture there on the right. Look at it. Does that look like a bomb to you? Not to me. I really doubt that Osama Bin Ladin would think to tell his henchman to construct explosive devices that look like Lite-Brites featuring obscure American cartoon characters giving people the finger. But get this: it was said that because the LEDs had wires, electronic components, and batteries, it fit the description of an improvised explosive device. Gee, if that's what homemade explosives are made out of, then electronics stores nationwide must be fronts for terrorist organizations. These signs had been up for weeks all across the country, and you didn't hear about Philly or San Francisco or any of these other cities panicking over them. It might be just me, but I think Boston really needs to pull the stick out of its ass and calm down.
Ever since the World Trade Center attacks, it seems like terrorism has become the new Communism. Everyone was afraid of Communism back during Joe McCarthy's red scare, and now everybody's afraid that every little thing is some kind of terrorist development. If you left a broken VCR in a cardboard box on a street corner before 9/11, it would have just been a cardboard box with a broken VCR in it. Nowadays, if somebody stumbled across that box, everybody would freak out and say it's a bomb. Is America that paranoid? Are we that afraid of our shadow?
It appears that the nation has lost its sense of whimsy in this post-9/11 America. And that's terrible.
If you've been living under a rock since Wednesday and haven't heard the news, there was a bomb scare in Boston. But it turns out that they weren't bombs after all. They weren't even related to bombs. They were just a guerrilla marketing campaign organized by Turner Broadcasting. An advertising agency had put together a number of LED placards featuring the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show that's part of Cartoon Network's late night "Adult Swim" programming block, and placed them in ten major cities around the country. They'd been around for two or three weeks, but suddenly someone in Boston confuses a homemade Lite-Brite for a bomb and things go crazy.
Look at that picture there on the right. Look at it. Does that look like a bomb to you? Not to me. I really doubt that Osama Bin Ladin would think to tell his henchman to construct explosive devices that look like Lite-Brites featuring obscure American cartoon characters giving people the finger. But get this: it was said that because the LEDs had wires, electronic components, and batteries, it fit the description of an improvised explosive device. Gee, if that's what homemade explosives are made out of, then electronics stores nationwide must be fronts for terrorist organizations. These signs had been up for weeks all across the country, and you didn't hear about Philly or San Francisco or any of these other cities panicking over them. It might be just me, but I think Boston really needs to pull the stick out of its ass and calm down.Ever since the World Trade Center attacks, it seems like terrorism has become the new Communism. Everyone was afraid of Communism back during Joe McCarthy's red scare, and now everybody's afraid that every little thing is some kind of terrorist development. If you left a broken VCR in a cardboard box on a street corner before 9/11, it would have just been a cardboard box with a broken VCR in it. Nowadays, if somebody stumbled across that box, everybody would freak out and say it's a bomb. Is America that paranoid? Are we that afraid of our shadow?
It appears that the nation has lost its sense of whimsy in this post-9/11 America. And that's terrible.
posted by Matt Sutton at
4:04 PM
5 Comments:
It is terrible how paranoid and twitchy we've become, but perhaps ... perhaps ... Adult Swim should have thought through a little more, too.
You're probably right. If it were me, I'd have gone the "Andre The Giant Has A Posse" sticker route.
But I won't fault the ad agency or Adult Swim for being somewhat creative. And I'm mainly amazed at just how extreme the overreaction was. Fancy lights do not constitute a bomb threat.
I dare to say that it is not the intention for any bomb maker to warn the victims of the bomb so the flashy LCDs should have been an indication that it wasn't a bomb.
He's doing that as hard as he can.
And then he's going to steal our pornography and sodomize his vast imagination.
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