Over on Universal Hub, I’m following the threads on the “Bomb Hoax” (which wasn’t, it was an ad campaign, fyi). I posted all my thoughts there in one of the comments, so I’ll only excerpt here. Oh, and the title of the post was my utterly original reference in my comment. I was so proud of that one! And then I did some web-hoping and discovered someone else called them that too. Damn.
So anyway, I’m glad that the police reacted, I really am. My concern is the overreaction, and the complete post-event meltdown of our leaders. Yes, all bomb-like objects need to be treated as if they are bombs. But these things were blinking and waving at people for three weeks, and apparently, they didn’t appear to be bombs to the thousands of people who passed them every day.
The two young men who got thrown in jail for putting them up…that could be any of us. What if you were working on a robot kit (they sell them) and you put your project in your backpack and a wire or two was sticking out. And you put your bag down for a minute at the bus stop. You’d be sitting in jail with those other two guys for “scaring the public” with your fake bomb.
The line that got me was from a blogger who says he’s a homeland security consultant (?). He says:
“you can bet that now any sleeper cells in the US have tucked this
particular one away: what kind of fun thing can we use to disguise a bomb as
next time? …”
Um, dude? You don’t think they were already doing that? I mean, seriously, you don’t think they were trying to figure out how do disguise things as bombs BEFORE now? It’s so typical of the government these days. Blame the people. If a bomb shows up in the shape of a yo-yo, that’s going to be Ted Turner’s fault. We are to blame for terrorists doing terrorist things, just because we refuse to build bunkers to hide in for the rest of our lives.
Keep threatening to arrest people for taking pictures of birds. Don’t let people take magazines on flights. Because really, if we can’t live in a 100% completely paranoid state, we aren’t trying hard enough.
After the “hair style” press conference I have much less sympathy for the 2 guys (excuse me, performance artists) who put the stupid signs up.
What a crazy world.
Understand where you are coming from but two other comments:
1. How did the people get away with putting these things under bridges etc without someone noticing. That does not bode well for the real guys trying something. If I seen something being placed with batteries and wires hanging out I would call it in.
2. Another popular ploy is to put out several duds and then have one look the same but be the real thing to try to lure people into being not vigilant.
Those 2 guys were idiots.. cul
Well said, Jody. The whole thing has just spiraled out of control.