2,000,000. That’s the price of humorless ignorance in this country. At least it’s what The Cartoon Network and Interference, Inc. have agreed to shell out because some ignoramus in Boston saw a sign with LEDs on it and thought ‘Bomb!’
He/she thought this because, as ignorami know from watching too many Jean Claude Van Damme movies, if you’re a terrorist, you’re going to build your bomb, and rather than conceal it so it has a chance of detonating, you’re going to cover it with blinking lights, and hang it in plain view, so as to attract as much attention as possible.
We’ve reached a really sad point in this country when our people can’t tell the difference between bombs and signs. One can only hope that whoever reported them never vacations in Vegas, or hits Times Square. I’m afraid if they did their wittle heads would explode.
Of course the real culprit here isn’t the poor misguided ignoramus that reported the sign in the first place. The real culprit is a news media that is so desperate for the next 9/11 story that they’d report a linebacker breaking wind on the sidelines as a ‘chemical attack at the Super Bowl.’
They breathlessly reported the suspected ‘bomb.’ This awakened other ignorami who then began calling in the ‘bombs’ all over the city. (You know, the ones that they had been passing by for the previous two weeks.) ‘I didn’t realize that was a bomb! Thank Betsy the nice man in the suit on my TV told me!’ The media then reported that bombs were being found all over Boston.
The lunacy of the whole thing really makes you want to just curl up in a ball and weep gently.
Of course, then the whole thing began to unravel, and rather than own up to the fact that they messed up, the fine folks at the new services stopped talking about ‘bombs’ and started talking about ‘devices.’ Eventually this morphed into ‘hoax devices,’ implying the intent of the sign makers was to scare people and create a panic.
Clearly that wasn’t the intent of the sign makers at all. Their intent was to advertise a cartoon movie. And in nine other cities across the country that’s exactly what they did. The signs hung there didn’t cause a ripple.
Creating a panic? Not their intent at all. That was the intent of CNN, and FoxNews, and MSNBC and…
The 24 hour news cycle must be fed.
Graysong doesn’t really care what you have to say, but if you feel you must…
…graysong@windycitytimes.com