Comments on: Boston Frees the Mooninite Two

By: Roy Bell

Roy Bell — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:50:03 +0000

I can’t believe Cartoon Network isn’t helping these guys out since they’re the ones who hired them.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:20:32 +0000

Okay. That actually makes sense. I can see one person spontaneously reporting a suspicious item (even one that’s been there for weeks), then the media response scaring everyone else into believing they were bombs.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:11:59 +0000

My understanding of the timeline is as follows. An MBTA worker spotted one of the signs from the back, so he could only see wires and circuits and whatnot. He calls it in, the bomb squad arrives, and the media starts covering the event.

Then other people see suspicious packages and start calling in reports. From there everything snowballed, with Fox News breathlessly announcing possible bombs all over Boston.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:56:09 +0000

*sigh* It makes me sad that Turner is caving on this.

Has anyone seen any information about the nature of the emergency calls that triggered the response? The info I’ve seen says the signs had been in place for weeks, then suddenly one day calls apparently started flooding in. To me, that just doesn’t add up.

Was it a situation where the first call triggered a reacion, which brought media coverage, which in turn created a bunch of “Hey! I found one of those things I saw on TV!” emergency calls? That timeline makes sense to me. If that’s not what happened… if most of the calls started coming in before the media had a chance to describe the devices, it “feels” more likely that there was some kind of organized effort to purposely “misreport” the devices as bombs.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:14:36 +0000

Bah, stupid Boston. I’ve updated the post to mention that I jumped the gun. I see Turner and Interference are going to pay $2M for the stunt.

By: vika

vika — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 02:03:44 +0000

Sadly, I was wrong. MSNBC was wrong too. There is no official word yet on the dropping of charges bit.

Sigh.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:49:18 +0000

It seems pretty likely to me that Boston’s reaction was largely a matter of trying to project their embarrassment a bit. I guess the logic is that if they don’t ever admit that they were wrong, and if they insist that their initial assessments of the situation were (and continue to be) well-founded, then maybe that decreases the perception that they were idiots. I wonder if they took some inspiration from members of a particular governmental administration.

In hindsight, I think Stephen’s right: it’s easy for those of us familiar with the Mooninites to throw rocks, but if you have people calling in saying there are bombs, you gotta take precautions. It’s the follow-on that’s hard to justify.

By: Geof F. Morris

Geof F. Morris — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:48:39 +0000

It pisses me off that Turner seems willing to pay off Boston here. I mean, I don’t own stock, but …

1) That just means that municipalities are likely to overreact like this, knowing that, if it’s nothing but guerilla marketing, they can always get their costs recouped.

2) I’m a government contractor, and I have a very hard time believing they spent $750k in that short of a period of time. Really.