Promoted by Steven D. Even a 50 year old geezer like me (thank you son who watches Adult Swim) knew this was just an ad campaign. I’ve left Skippy’s signature no-caps style as is (for those who might be wondering about that).
a few interesting facts have come to lite-brite in the case of a major eastern seaboard city getting shut down by a cartoon, which we reported earlier today.
the boston phoenix reports that the bpd wasn’t well-known for their competence before this:
for years, boston has been one of the least successful cities in the us at catching and prosecuting murderers, and it’s only getting worse. even in the “boston miracle” days of the early-and-mid 1990s, when operation ceasefire cut down on gang violence, the boston police department (bpd) made arrests in just 50 percent of murders, well below the national average of 65 percent. now the figure has nose-dived further, to less than a third of homicides solved since the start of 2004.
more after the jump:
but even these “solved” cases don’t stand up to scrutiny. nationally, just six percent of murder defendants in urban-county trials win acquittals; in boston, an astonishing 27 percent have been acquitted over the past eight years. since the start of 2004, juries have found just 16 of 30 boston murder defendants guilty. (seven were acquitted of all charges, three were found guilty of only assault and battery, and four received mistrials.) boston also has an unusually high number of convictions reversed on appeal or vacated as wrongful. san francisco, for instance, has released two people wrongfully convicted of murder in the past 15 years; boston released that many last year alone.
simply put, the bpd’s homicide unit has the worst track record of any big-city police department in the country.
the phoenix points out that similar devices were planted in other cities including new york and los angeles, and “nobody freaked out there.” the reason? apparently folks in those cities have heard of a strange futuristic communications technique called “youtube,” where you can see videos of these “miscreants” planting these “hoax devices”:
as to the two slacker hippie pinko commies arrested for making the charles river flow backwards, abcnews rightly asks the question: hey, what about their bosses who paid them to do this?
one of the two men charged in connection with the advertising campaign that turned into a terror scare was told to keep quiet as the stunt sent the city of boston into chaos, according to two fellow artists who provided abc news with an e-mail from the man supporting their claim…
but friends and fellow artists toshi hoo and travis vautour said it’s not [arrested artists peter] berdovsky and [sean] stevens who should take the fall for this.
according to hoo and vautour, the new york-based guerilla marketing firm, interference inc., which was running the advertising campaign in boston; new york; los angeles; chicago; atlanta; seattle; portland, ore.; austin, texas; san francisco; and philadelphia, told berdovsky to keep his involvement quiet as the event was playing out.
“we received an e-mail in the early afternoon from peter that asked the community that he’s a part of to keep any information we had on the down low and that was instructed to him by whoever his boss was in this advertising campaign gone wrong,” vautour said. “i don’t know if it was for security reasons or it was to buy them some time or to buy peter some time.”
in an e-mail obtained by abc news sent from berdovsky to hoo at 1:26 p.m. wednesday, the artist writes, “my boss at the cartoon network’s ad agency just called — she is asking that i pretty please keep everything on the dl [down low; quiet].” the e-mail, supplied by hoo, contains a large swath of blacked-out text that he claims contained personal information he’d rather not share.
also via the phoenix, we bring you proof of just how insidiously destructive the mooninites can be:
addendum: via alternet’s peek, seattle wasn’t all that upset w/the same marketing campaign. seattle times:
in the seattle area, the first device was found tuesday by a woodinville public works department crew working on a railroad trestle over highway 202, said woodinville police chief john mcswain.
“public works found it and took it down and didn’t even bother to call us” because the device didn’t appear to be threatening, he said…
mcswain and other officers removed three more of the devices from various locations, including an awning at a business, in a mini-mall and in front of another business.
the appearance of the devices indicated they weren’t too sinister, with one officer describing them as a battery, a light and a cartoon character making an obscene gesture, mcswain said.
double addendum: tho many other blogs have quoted our good friend august j. pollak en toto (and dorothy, too!) we’ll just link to him and tell you that he has the ultimate and best analysis of the whole story, plus, he sounds just like glenn greenwald!
