Let us take time to remember the Mooninite invasion of Boston one year ago wherein the mayor (Thomas M. Menino) ignored both good information and internet memes.
This is not a criticism of the Boston Police and emergency response teams who, acting on orders from the mayor, did a near perfect job of securing a huge metropolitan area and showing exactly how a coordinated response effort is supposed to unfold.
No, this is a reminder that many of or elected leaders are aging, isolated fuddy duddies who absolutely need to get out more.
Let us all recall that Boston was one of many major metropolitan areas in the US where a guerrilla marketing firm had L E D Moonanite signs posted in an effort to raise US awareness of the AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE movie to a fever pitch.
Let us recall that these guerrilla placement missions were video taped and posted online for months prior to the incident in Boston.
Let us recall that Boston Bomb authorities also detonated a traffic counting device just weeks following the event. No one was charged in this "hoax".
Let us all remember that other major metropolitan areas - Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco - all identified the objects as harmless and either removed them or left them in place.
Let us all recall that Google exists.
That said, I submit that the incident in Boston, the confusion which followed and any expenses incurred were the sole responsibility of the Mayor's Office of Boston. This is not to say that Mayor Thomas M. Menino was necessarily wrong in activating his reaction teams. Thomas M. Menino's only mistake was not having access to a media team to research the issue with all resources available once the effort was underway.
Look folks, innocent bomb scares happen. Things get blown up by mistake. The police will, on occasion, be called for an emergency that doesn't exist. As I've stated before, just because I leave my lunch box on a park bench and the bomb squad is called out to detonate my bologna sandwich, doesn't mean the the mayor's office gets to charge me with a hoax.
The incident in Boston was a simple misunderstanding. The charges filed by the city of Boston on the individuals responsible were a simple face-saving measure. The entire event was a perfect storm of media and pop-culture un-awareness, failure to heed good information and simply living in a time of heightened awareness. In the end, Aqua Teen Hunger Force got some headline exposure, the Boston authorities got an excellent disaster drill and Thomas M. Menino got to get out a little bit and smell the roses. Which he needs to do more often...
Bologna sandwiches will get detonated from time to time. It's no one's fault. Take it as experience and move on.
