{"id":695,"date":"2007-02-03T17:37:01","date_gmt":"2007-02-03T23:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/granades.com\/2007\/02\/03\/boston-frees-the-mooninite-two\/"},"modified":"2007-02-05T11:06:27","modified_gmt":"2007-02-05T17:06:27","slug":"boston-frees-the-mooninite-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/granades.com\/?p=695","title":{"rendered":"Boston Frees the Mooninite Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

It now appears that Boston will be dropping charges against the two people who hung the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Mooninite signs around the city<\/a>. It’s about time. [UPDATE: As Vika points out in the comments, MSNBC jumped the gun. At this point charges against Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens are still pending. Sigh.]<\/p>\n

Look, here’s the thing. The initial Boston response makes sense: you find something suspicious, so you shut things down until you have a chance to assess. It’s the follow-on response<\/a> that was farcical. The police blew up one of the lite-bright-like signs yet couldn’t tell from the debris that it wasn’t a bomb. They couldn’t tell from looking at an intact sign that it wasn’t a bomb.<\/p>\n

\"Mooninite<\/div>\n

I’m not sure exactly where they thought the C4 was, or where the detonation electronics were. IEDs just don’t look like these signs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Breathless news speculation on the part of Fox News and other news organizations fueled hysteria. Turner Broadcasting, the people ultimately responsible for the marketing ploy, didn’t contact the Boston PD for some four hours, likely because their lawyers needed time to stare wide-eyed at the TV and say, “Holy crap, no other city went bat-shit insane over this — what do we do?” But even after Turner did fax in the location of all the signs, Boston officials didn’t respond like they should have. Instead of dismissing the over-reaction with a statement like, “This was a threat we took seriously and we’re glad that the devices turned out merely to be harmless signs,” politicians and police chiefs ratcheted up the rhetoric.<\/p>\n