mortal danger or grand hoax

Yesterday morning on my way into work, I heard that a local area, Sullivan Square, was swarming with police and that traffic was jammed in the area. Later in the day, it turned out that there were "devices" found on bridges and other structures around the city. Still later, it came out that the Turner Broadcasting System had paid for these devices to be installed as a form of advertising for some cartoon. So the devices in the end were harmless. At the same time, their discovery caused much worry, a lot of police action, and many delays.

In my younger "it can't happen here" days, I might have rolled my eyes and said "Can't anyone take a joke?" I'm glad this turned out to be a joke/hoax, but it does illustrate how easily paralyzed our great cities could be, and it doesn't take much -- a little sneakiness at night, a little low-technology, and either a little coordination or a little time. It's the small stuff that gets you.

And what did TBS do when it discovered how upset Bostonians were? They apologized not for their boneheaded act (and it truly was boneheaded -- I mean, how dumb can you get?) but for the concern that was caused.

"We really deeply regret that it was horribly misinterpreted to be a public danger, when all it was intended to do was to draw attention to a late-night television show," they said.

Now that 9/11 has slammed home the dangers all around us, don't you think that a responsible company would seek permission to place devices with batteries and protruding wires on city infrastructure? And that maybe that permission and the ensuing announcements to the public might have garnered even more publicity but of the positive variety?

File this under "what were they thinking" and go to bed feeling even less secure than the previous night.