rage within the machine

i can not get over this aqua teen hullabaloo and how many local politicians are squeezing it for every penny it's worth in an attempt to puff up their case for squeezing turner broadcasting for every penny it's worth, and i've never been so ashamed to be a lifelong boston local. i thought moving to somerville was the best, most happy-making thing i'd ever done, but now somerville's mayor, joe curtatone, has climbed atop a soapbox all his very own to do his part in rousing the rabble. i find the level of public ire aimed at the network and the men who planted the ads perverse and somewhat baffling, and i would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt dismay and bewilderment at my homeland's eagerness to promote paranoia and irrational levels of fear and outrage. so here are some excerpts from mayor angry joe's announcements, and following those excerpts are my rebuttals.

Somerville’s Mayor Joe Curtatone has joined the growing chorus of city and state officials who want charges brought against those responsible for putting electrical devices under area bridges and overpasses.

Curtatone announced Wednesday night that Somerville is exploring both civil and criminal legal action against all of the parties responsible for putting suspicious electrical devices up. Curtatone said he will coordinate his actions with the City of Boston, the state Attorney General’s Office, and the Middlesex County District Attorney, but he did not rule out the possibility of the city taking unilateral legal action.

"These devices may not be explosive, but they’re far from harmless--they’ve done a lot of damage to local budgets and to the taxpayers of Somerville and other area communities," Curtatone said. "It doesn’t matter if they were discovered after three hours or three weeks. You can’t put circuit boards with battery power packs under bridges and overpasses without somebody eventually--and correctly--deciding that they’re potentially dangerous."

no, mayor angry joe, it was not correct for people to decide they were potentially dangerous. it would have been correct for people to wonder whether they might have been dangerous, and it would have been correct for a police team to quietly inspect one or two in order to decide whether or not they were dangerous, but it was shockingly far from correct for the city to be disabled from one end to the other because people had decided, without any exploration into the issue, that these things were probably dangerous. the devices didn't damage local budgets--insanely reactionary local officials did, and that only happened in boston. in new york, where things have actually been blown up, local officials employed reason and tact and concern for public mental health and dealt with the devices sanely. their budgets aren't ravaged, because they took the time to uncover the fact that the devices were, in fact, one hundred percent harmless.

Curtatone noted that the city would not only seek reimbursement for its costs but would work hard to impose criminal penalties or fines that would discourage similar stunts in the future. "In the current climate, we need to make sure that no one else decides that this is a cost-effective marketing strategy," Curtatone said.

no one is responsible for the disruption but you, menino, and whoever else was involved in revving up the sirens; if the city requires reimbursement for the costs of a disproportionately alarmist and massive bomb-squad scavenger hunt, it should come out of your pockets. let these poor guys out of jail already. they were hired to disperse promotional materials, which in and of themselves caused zero damage to the city or its public works. in the current climate, you have a responsibility to make sure you don't sound false alarms or needlessly terrify your constituents. we need to make sure no one else decides yours was a cost-effective defensive or investigative strategy.

"There may be a tendency on the part of some people to laugh this off because it was a marketing stunt designed to promote a cartoon show on cable television. But I guarantee that the taxpayers of Somerville and surrounding cities aren’t laughing--and neither are the commuters and the public safety professionals who had to cope with the consequences," Curtatone said.

i'm laughing. at least, i was, until you made me too angry to carry on with it. i get that you're mad, you're embarrassed, you feel as if you've been punk'd, and you want to focus the blame on someone else. but that's childish, and it's not the sort of behavior taxpayers and commuters like to see from their elected officials. we want our public safety officials to make us feel safe, and there's no worse way for them to fail us in that respect than to prove, as they did yesterday, that they don't know what they're looking for or at or how to manage us and our city when they come across something eye-catching. and the consequences, as i've mentioned, were of public safety professionals' actions, not those of a cartoon show or a cable network. their actions were harmless, as was proved by the lack of harm caused by identical actions all across the country. boston screwed up, and now it's time for it to 'fess up. you guys wicked flew off the handle. i know it, you know it, everybody knows it; own it.

According to the Boston Herald, Boston spent $1 million in overtime costs investigating the stunt and dealing with its aftermath.

As city and state attorneys laid groundwork for criminal charges and lawsuits, cops seized 27-year-old Arlington multimedia artist Peter Berdovsky, who posted film on his Web site boasting that he and friends planted the battery-wired devices, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown. Both were jailed overnight on charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct.

these charges are obscene. these guys hung pictures on poles. if the pictures hadn't been battery wired, we'd be hailing them as underground art superstars. they'd be the commonwealth's christo and jeanne-claude. there was no hoax; the objects were what they were, and no one tried to portray them as otherwise until city officials became involved. in other, less excitable cities, police took one down, found out what it was, and called the television network. the network told them where the rest of the ads could be found, and people took them down--end of story. no disorder resulted, and none was called for. these men are not responsible for what went on yesterday. let them go. seriously. let them go.

"This is outrageous activity to get publicity for a failing show," said Menino, referring to the battery-operated light-up ads for the Cartoon Network’s "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," which sparked at least nine bomb scares in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville.

Menino promised to sue Turner Broadcasting Co., the Cartoon Network’s parent company, and criminally prosecute Berdovsky and anyone else responsible for the devices, and to petition the FCC to pull the network’s license.

"I am pleased by the prompt, professional and well-coordinated response of law enforcement at all levels to this series of discoveries, and relieved that none of the devices presents a danger to the public. The investigation is ongoing, but there is no reason for anyone to panic."

first, this show is anything but failing. it's one of the most popular shows the network has ever aired, and has been practically since it debuted about six years ago. second, the ads didn't spark bomb scares; the bomb squads who shut down traffic to take soil samples and detonate LED panels at sites where the ads were found sparked bomb scares, and that should never have happened. the lawsuits are rubbish, as i've already discussed, and the idea of getting the fcc involved is so outrageous that i'm practically licking the carpet, my jaw's dropped so far open. the fcc doesn't regulate the actions of television fans or any of the things that television network employees do in any arena outside of a national broadcast, and cable channels are by and large out of the fcc's jurisdiction. pull their license? because you didn't get their ads? and now, now, he understands that there's no reason to panic? get the fuck outta here.

Laura Crimaldi and Michele McPhee of the Boston Herald contributed to this report.

hats off to you, ladies. in your place, i could not have performed my journalistic duties so unemotionally as you have done. but really, i mean, you can tell me: how many times did the two of you almost choke on your coffee while collecting these quotes? spit-take city, right? it had to have been. it's o.k., you and i, we're not alone. honest.

listen, joe, tom--all over america, people are rolling their eyes at us, and you're only making it worse. this thing got botched in a big way, but it isn't too late for you to save face. say you overreacted out of a sincere and profound concern for your citizens, but you have realized your error and want to apologize to the public for causing unwarranted distress. say in the future you won't act so thoughtlessly, and let's all get on with our day. do not say berdovsky and stevens deserve to be in jail for threatening public welfare, because that's bollocks, and don't try to convince me that the city was damaged by a few dozen colored bulbs. it was damaged by your failure as leaders. don't continue to fail us by refusing to take responsibility. the city doesn't need to hear from politicians about this; be men.


update, 2/1/07, 2:49 PM: berdovsky and stevens have been released on bail, and mumbles is maybe beginning to blush a bit about having come down so hard on them, claiming now that the only culprits he has any real interest in are the board executives at turner broadcasting. but that's still crazy, and he's still not sorry, and i'm still pissed.