These guys are my heroes:

Note: They aren’t my heroes because they perpetrated a terrorist hoax. They’re my heroes because they didn’t perpetrate a terrorist hoax. And, therefore, they’re treating Boston’s Very Powerful Men like the buffoons they are.

(Slight revision to original post: I don’t blame Boston officials for initially being suspicious of the devices, though one would hope our paid homeland security experts can by now distinguish a bomb from an LED device shaped in the figure of a cartoon character without first shutting down major thoroughfares. The shame comes in what happened after they realized their mistake — in their refusal to admit it was a mistake, and in their scapegoating Turner Broadcasting, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and the artists for their own rash and ill-considered decision to close down the city. You guys screwed up. Quit calling this a “hoax.” It was a marketing gimmick. No one meant any harm. Stop the prison and punishment talk. Own up to your mistake and move on.)

Jamie Malanowski reacts at Playboy:

This is getting out of hand. The 9/11 terrorists killed 3,000 people. They’ve caused this country to spend billions to prevent attacks that didn’t come and weren’t ever coming. We’ve wasted millions of hours in security hours and thrown away millions of nail clippers and bottles of mouthwash preventing the boogeyman from coming after us. And now the terrorists are causing us to lose all sense of proportion. They’re making us look foolish. They’re taking away our sense of humor. A handful of them have the mightiest nation on earth terrorizing itself.

John Mueller, call your office.

August J. Pollak also dishes out the snark to Boston officials.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 9:48 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.