Jules Crittenden has the latest on the obnoxious Beantown “guerilla marketers” who turned my hometown into a giant parking lot last week. One of the two enjoyed the mayhem so much, he filmed Boston’s finest taking down one of the “bombs” he planted and then followed the fun all day. If this little nugget of information doesn’t turn you against these morons, probably nothing will. The bomb squad guys who were taking down the devices these bozos planted thought their lives were in danger. While the bomb squad was doing its job, these idiots were enjoying a good laugh at their expense.
It’s been interesting how the reaction to this little episode has played out. The reaction seems to be immune to the ideology of individual reactors. How people perceive this incident breaks down along generational lines.
Young people who are hip to adult cartoons and guerilla marketing think the city of Boston made a collective ass of itself by overreacting to those little blipping things. Older people who stopped watching cartoons since long before “The Simpsons” began to suck think the guerilla marketers are idiots, and their defenders guilty of dangerous 9/10 thinking.
I’m stuck between this generational divide as befits a guy who’s pushing 40 and who only gave up on “The Simpsons” a year ago. As such, I’m of two minds on this affair. On the one hand, Boston did sort of embarrass itself. We’re by nature alarmists and narcissists. We call ourselves the Hub of the universe, even if no one else agrees. As this relates to terrorism, the day after the Oklahoma City bombing we had to clear most of our governmental buildings because we were convinced we were next. New York City and Washington D.C. didn’t experience similar collective panic attacks.
On the other hand, the guerilla marketers are annoying and irresponsible idiots. For irrefutable evidence of this fact, check out their press conference from last week if you haven’t already. If being a jackass were a crime, these two would have an imminent date with Old Sparky.
IN THE WEEK SINCE THE INCIDENT, I’ve come to think of the event as analogous to that episode a few years ago when a civic-minded kid demonstrated how vulnerable our air traffic was to terrorism by placing weapons and other whatnots on Southwest planes and then told the authorities of his little stunt. Last week’s stunt lacked the social responsibility, of course.
If these two morons and their like-minded pals could place devices that look at least a little similar to explosives under bridges and in similarly sensitive areas in major cities across America, how vulnerable is our country? Shouldn’t this serve as some sort of wake-up call?
A lot of people across the country have been harshly critical of Boston’s Mayor Tom Menino. I’ve never been a huge fan of Mumbles, but he’s a decent guy. I’ll also point out that if you’re a big city mayor and terrorism doesn’t scare the bejeebus out of you, you’re an idiot.
Mayor Menino was properly alarmed last week. But the rest of society wasn’t. Our thoughts on terrorism have drifted into two separate camps. The leftist camp thinks that terrorism is merely a means for Republicans to peddle fear so they can hold onto power. People who think of terrorism in this way are so sorely misguided that their ideological opponents can’t help but benefit by comparison. But too often conservatives think of terrorism only in terms of worst-case scenarios. We preoccupy ourselves with phantoms like suitcase nukes, rather than focusing on real and present dangers.
What happened last week in Boston could serve as a needed wake-up call for how vulnerable our major cities are to a Hezbollah sleeper cell or any other small band of determined and remotely capable whack-jobs. But I don’t think it will.
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