That's Corporate America For You

It's yesterday afternoon. Boston is inexplicably on lockdown from the scourge of dangerous cartoon characters. So the ad manager working for Turner, in his or her infinite wisdom, saw this scene unfolding on television, knew that (s)he was ultimately responsible, and the immediate reaction was to keep everybody quiet.

One of the two men charged in connection with the advertising campaign that turned into a terror scare was asked to keep quiet as the stunt sent the city of Boston into chaos, according to two fellow artists who provided ABC News with an e-mail from the man supporting their claim [...]

In an e-mail obtained by ABC News sent from Berdovsky to Hoo at 1:26 p.m. Wednesday, the artist writes, "My boss at the Cartoon Network's ad agency just called — she is asking that I pretty please keep everything on the dl [down low; quiet]." The e-mail, supplied by Hoo, contains a large swath of blacked-out text that he claims contained personal information he'd rather not share.

No one at Interference Inc. answered the phone or responded to requests for comment on the authenticity of the e-mail.

(Interference was the company that hired the two artists who ended up getting arrested for working)

I knew that when push came to shove, Turner would just try to sever ties and act like it didn't happen.

Let me tell you about Turner. The one and only time I worked for them it took them four months to pay me. No exaggeration. Apparently they needed some certain paperwork, which was sitting on some desk in accounts payable for two weeks without letting anyone know they needed something additional. It's a big company that's known for having an awful relationship with their vendors, and so the fact that they would try to hush up the employees and create plausible deniability is wholly unsurprising.

Again, the fault lies with anyone dumb enough to look at a Mooninite and think terrorism, but Turner acted like scoundrels as well.

Never Forget

The day that changed everything.

Where were you?

(p.s. insert obligatory laughing at pants-pissing reactionaries here)

Free The Boston Two

Apparently the duo arrested in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force marketing case (can't believe I just wrote that) spent an entire press conference ignoring questions and talking about 1970s hairstyles. Good for them. They did nothing wrong and the whole made-for-TV, fear-on-demand situation demands ridicule.

Looking over my post from last night, I maybe did go a little far in the direction of blaming Turner Broadcasting, who actually did nothing wrong either. My point was that responsibility, such that it is, lies at the top. And Turner largely took that responsibility. But that they HAVE TO take any responsibility for putting up Lite Brites with a cartoon character on it in a public space is the height of absurdity. They haven't only lost the ability to laugh in Boston, they lost the war on terror. Because fear grips them so much that art is now a weapon. These devices were in multiple cities for a couple weeks and sparked nothing because they were obviously street art.

I'm with August J. Pollak on this one.

(Boston Mayor Thomas) Menino is going on TV and insisting he's going to send a 27-year old artist to jail for not breaking any law, because his police department overreacted and wasted a million dollars feeding a media frenzy and terrorizing the population of his own city. That's a cowardly act of self-preservation, and were he not threatening the life of an innocent young man it would be laughable.

Let's get a few facts straight on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force sign fiasco:

1. Attorney General Martha Coakley needs to shut up and stop using the word "hoax." There was no hoax. Hoax implies Turner Networks and the ATHF people were trying to defraud or confuse people as to what they were doing. Hoax implies they were trying to make their signs look like bombs. They weren't. They made Lite-Brite signs of a cartoon character giving the finger.

2. It bears repeating again that Turner, and especially Berdovsky, did absolutely nothing illegal. The devices were not bombs. They did not look like bombs. They were all placed in public spaces and caused no obstruction to traffic or commerce. At most, Berdovsky is guilty of littering or illegal flyering.

3. The "devices" were placed in ten cities, and have been there for over two weeks. No other city managed to freak out and commit an entire platoon of police officers to scaring their own city claiming they might be bombs. No other mayor agreed to talk to Fox News with any statement beyond "no comment" when spending the day asking if this was a "terrorist dry run."

4. There is nothing, not a single thing, remotely suggesting that Turner or the guerilla marketing firm they hired intended to cause a public disturbance. Many have claimed the signs were "like saying 'fire' in a crowded theater." Wrong. This was like taping a picture of a fire to the wall of a theater and someone freaked out and called the fire department.

5. The FCC can't pull a private cable network's license, Mayor Hyperbole McFuckwit.

The media and the city of Boston are hurt bad, they're embarrassed, and they need a scapegoat. Someone to push their anger and fear and frustration onto. They found two artists.

Free the Boston Two.

Two Men Arrested for Doing Their Job

This is totally fucked up.

Several illuminated electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most of the devices depict a character giving the finger.

Peter Berdovsky, 27, of Arlington, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown, were each charged Wednesday night with one count of placing a hoax device and one count of disorderly conduct, state Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

The two men worked together to place the devices, Coakley said in a news release announcing Stevens' arrest [...]

Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball. (funny deadpan, AP - ed.)

"The two men worked together to place the devices," like they were planning a bank heist or something. They were HIRED by Turner Broadcasting! You want to arrest someone, arrest the marketing manager? Or better yet, arrest yourselves for being dumb enough and so paralyzed by fear to think that a cartoon character giving you the finger was a FUCKING BOMB! This promotion was in a dozen cities over two weeks. Somehow NO OTHER CITY managed to whip themselves into a frenzy. Only Boston. And you're embarrassed, so you arrest the employees? THE EMPLOYEES?

This is a prime example of how the corporatocracy has completely changed America, to the extent that there isn't even a thought given to holding them responsible. They have fancy lawyers, and can apply corporate pressure. Time Warner Cable's in Pittsfield and Athol, MA (you can look it up). Since Time Warner hired a third-party company to put up the designs, they are once removed from the repsonsibility, I guess.

And the charge is ludicrous. These weren't HOAX DEVICES, they were advertising! There wasn't a deliberate attempt to scare the city of Boston, it was A CARTOON CHARACTER GIVING THE FINGER!

Because it's necessary to ratchet up fear to prove that you're protecting the homeland, two poor shlubs who did absolutely nothing but their jobs are going to sit in jail, victims of someone else's paranoia. This is a civil rights travesty.

(By the way, everyone involved in this is a Democrat, and they're all being completely stupid)

FEAR Unit play of the year!

Numba 1 in the hood, G:

Nine blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a marketing campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. At least one of the devices depicts a character giving the finger.

Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless.

"It's a hoax — and it's not funny," said Gov. Deval Patrick.

Turner Broadcasting, parent company of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."

"The packages in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger," Turner said in a statement. It said the devices have been in place for two to three weeks in 10 cities: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia.

"We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger," the company said.

I can understand the caution to a certain extent, but it's so obvious that something with this character on it, flipping the bird, is not exactly what Al Qaeda would be doing:



Oddly, I thought Aqua Teen Hunger Force was done with new episodes for the year, why are they advertising now?

(Incidentally, FEAR Unit used to stand for Federal Even-yeared Anti-terror Response, but now that they're using them increasingly to bolster an irrelevant President's approval ratings, I'll have to rejigger... Maybe it's the Federal Emergency Approval Ratings division of FEAR Unit? The FEAR sub-unit of FEAR?)