Fear and loathing in Boston
IN "MARKETING gambit exposes a wide generation gap" (Page A1, Feb. 1) Michael Levenson and Maria Cramer suggest that we should blame cultural literacy for the City of Boston's mistaken assumption that a guerrilla marketing event was a terrorist threat.
They write that "the episode exposed a wide generational gulf between government officials who reacted as if the ads might be bombs and 20-somethings raised on hip ads for Snapple, Apple, and Google who instantly recognized the images for what they were: a viral marketing campaign."
This social critique trivializes what happened Wednesday as if it were simply a case of old-school cranks telling the kids to turn their music down. Mayor Menino's outrage was concise and to the point: The episode exposes the gulf between corporate executives chasing a buck and those of us who remember the flights that took off from Logan Airport on Sept. 11.
I would argue, too, that the episode exposes another gulf. This one is between advertisers who make a profit by lawfully working within the boundaries of civic culture and advertisers who attack those boundaries with marketing plans their industry calls "guerrilla" and "viral" --adjectives we reserve for activities that threaten, rather than enhance, civic life.
TONY TRIGILIO
Chicago
IN THE wake of Wednesday's "bomb scare," the mayor and safety officials were quick to jump on those behind the advertising campaign with threats of prosecution for their bad judgment in this "post-9/11 age." Maybe they should first ask themselves why these signs, which appeared in cities all over the country, only triggered such a response in Boston. The fact that these lighted dots were seen as a possible terror threat that warranted a citywide shutdown makes me angry at the officials' misguided overreaction, not the people at Turner Broadcasting.
I am more concerned about America's post-9/11 state of fear than further terrorist attacks. The emotional wounds our country suffered in 2001 are haunting us as we throw money at perceived risks and surrender our freedoms in ways that are unlikely to make us any safer. If we really want to be safer, we should improve our world image by changing who we are and how we treat other nations. I think we would all be better off if we tried to find our pre-9/11 mentality.
MATT WALTER
Watertown
ON A trip to London six years ago, we witnessed two incidents. The first was at a restaurant where security had been called because an unexpected package was delivered to the front desk. The second was in a theater where patrons called security when someone left a backpack unattended during intermission. We wondered how long it would be before Americans became as sensitive to terror threats as the British, and today we know.
After five and a half years of Homeland Security alerts, terrorism warnings, and constant reminders from our leaders that we are a nation at war, the people of Boston reacted when unfamiliar glowing icons were placed around the city in a guerrilla marketing campaign for a cartoon most of us had never heard of.
Some suggest that people overreacted and Boston just doesn't get it. Maybe Boston gets it all too well.
MARYELLEN WALSH
Weymouth
THE INTERPRETATION that the recent publicity stunt gone awry was intentionally a terrorist hoax is unfounded. If the pranksters are prosecuted using post-9/11 laws intended to dissuade people from purposefully frightening the public with acts of faux terrorism, it would be a miscarriage of justice and a travesty.
These ad-men may be guilty of poor judgment, unauthorized use of property, littering, possibly lewdness for the obscene gesture the angry cartoon character was leveling at passersby, and creating a hazard on I-93 by placing an illuminated sign in the line of sight of motorists. They did not wish to put Homeland Security into motion, nor did they conspire to bring our fair city practically to a standstill. They were foolishly attempting to publicize a cartoon.
However, I can think of a far more costly hoax : the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was trying to procure yellowcake from Niger. This involved outing a CIA agent whose team was working to prevent terrorists from obtaining WMDs and misleading the public into believing that Iraq had ties with Al Qaeda. These con artists conjured up images of mushroom clouds and preyed upon a public that had endured Sept. 11. Where is the demand to prosecute the perpetrators of a publicity stunt that has cost the lives of countless Iraqi citizens and more than 3,000 US troops, the limbs of tens of thousands of our troops, and billions of our tax dollars?
C.L. CASELLA
Needham
I AM baffled by the response from the government, police, and media over the "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" ads found in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville . It is sad that so many people seem so completely caught up in this climate of fear that they would overreact to something as simple as a few lights on a sign that had already been posted for about two weeks.
In fact, the only thing I find scary from this whole event is that if those "devices" really had been bombs, we could have been killed weeks ago.
CONOR EVANS
Cambridge
I WAS 13 when World War II ended, and kids my age read a great deal about the war. One of the things I distinctly remember is that booby traps, "improvised explosive devises" meant to cripple and kill, were often disguised as innocent objects, such as cameras, field glasses, and other items soldiers might pick up. And part of the German bombing campaign over Great Britain was to drop objects that looked like toys and exploded when picked up.
EUGENE R. WIDRICK
Billerica
TURNER BROADCASTING can't repay Boston or the country for helping to undermine public threat assessment. Placing LEDs on sites known as vulnerable to terrorism is reprehensible in today's world. Stunts like these demoralize and desensitize individual and family preparedness for disaster that is essential for our nation's security.
NANCY VINEBURGH
Bedford
STEVENS AND Berdovsky were savvy enough to one-up the media on its own turf at a press conference, and this left reporters pouty because they all had to rewrite their sound bites. Brian McGrory ("Bad hair day in Boston," City & Region, Feb. 2) suggests making "idiocy a crime" and having them do 1,000 hours of community service for staging the performance. If idiocy were really a crime in this whole incident, the local media would be locked up. The authorities overreacted and the media sensationalized, and now the city is shifting all the blame for the debacle to Turner, and the media will cover it that way because they played a large role in blowing it out of proportion.
We live in a culture of fear that is fueled by media that is as quick to make assumptions as law enforcement and other officials. It seems that if reporters were angry following the press conference, it was because they had to deviate from their own performances.
DAVE ORTEGA
Somerville
AT LAST it is unmasked for what it truly is. It pervades our lives. We find it whenever we turn around for what we think is a better view of ourselves, at church, at school, on the street, on the television.
It imbues us with fear, so much so that our lives are changed in accommodating it. It alters the flow of commercial traffic, often to the point of disruption. It even changes our perception of what art is, of what beauty is, even of the meaning and value of life.
Social terrorism, thy name is advertising.
Isn't there a better way for all of us to make money?
GLENN JENKS
Camden, Maine 