Ignignokt is a mooninite. You may recognize him from the Cartoon Network series “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” You may also recognize him as a character flipping you off on a series of Lite Brite-esque boards left around 10 major cities around the U.S. If you do, you also know that Boston was the only city that overreacted and assumed the lightboards were, in fact, improvised explosive devices.

This entire incident, which unfolded last Tuesday, on Jan. 31, encompasses several levels of stupid. The first and least dumb are the guys at Turner Broadcasting, and the marketing company involved, Interference, Inc. It wasn’t exactly the most brilliant marketing plan, a bunch of pseudo-Lite Brites, but they’re fun and look cool at night.

To the people who thought the lightboards looked suspicious: I understand. They were off during the day, after all. Not everyone knows what the compositions of various electronics are, and because one of them was hanging on a bridge, I can understand calling the police out of concern.

The police are where the story gets truly ludicrous. Once they got a close look at even one of these, they should’ve realized exactly what this was: An advertisement. The only thing that makes it different from a neon sign advertising Bud Light is that no one knows what a mooninite is. The similarities with an explosive device found by the Boston police are batteries, wires and electrical tape. Discounting the electrical tape, these are items found in nearly every electronic device ever sold.

The media also displayed a huge amount of irresponsibility in characterizing this story. They constantly referred to the lightboards as “packages” or “devices” or other ominous words, as well as continuing to refer to the events as a “bomb hoax” well after Turner had issued their apology. The 24 hours news networks, running low on 2008 presidential candidates to interview and casualties to report in Iraq, latched onto the story and gave it nonstop coverage. Even after it had been discovered that this was at best an amusing anecdote involving an advertising campaign, they continued to talk about it like there was an actual threat to society.

Of course, the authorities in Boston were equally asinine in handling the egg on their faces after they discovered they had closed down a waterway and countless major roads over a cartoon advertisement. They arrested a pair hired to put up the advertisements, charging the pair with “placing a hoax device to incite panic,” and claiming the two were trying to “get attention by causing fear and unrest that there was a bomb in that location.”

This is, of course, absurd. Anyone with half a brain and any knowledge of electronics could tell that these things were completely harmless, Turner is saying they’re harmless, and well, if I was a terrorist, would I be placing flashing cartoon characters flipping people off on my bombs? Well, according to Massachusetts Attorney General, the boards “had a very sinister appearance. It had a battery behind it, and wires.” I feel so safe that Boston’s finest are on the case here. After all, the lightboards had only been in place for around two weeks.

There is a more serious side to this, though. Boston Mayor Tom Menino applauded the actions of the law enforcement agencies in his town, and denouncing the advertisements, saying that “it is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme.” Mr. Mayor, I would charge that if we are so scared that we are running away from neon signs of cartoon characters, and condemning any sort of freeform public expression, the terrorists have indeed won.

I feel like this incident, no matter how asinine and hilarious it is on the outside, illustrates precisely the kind of damage that was truly caused to this country on Sept. 11, 2001. Days after the attack, the Congress gave up countless freedoms and civil liberties in the name of keeping us “safe.” After a purported plot to blow up airplanes with liquid bombs, we lost the ability to carry our own beverages onto airplanes. That plot has since been revealed to be a bomb scare without bombs, or even the intent to bomb, but the rules still stand. On Oct. 17, 2006, we gave up the most essential liberty granted to us, in the form of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which denies U.S. citizens the right to habeus corpus if the president or secretary of defense wish it to be so.

And for what? To protect our freedoms from terrorists.

It’s sad that Turner Broadcasting is paying a reported $2 million in fines for breaking no laws at all. It sets a terrible precedent that apparently a cool two million is the only way to have free speech, however silly your message is. However, I would guess that $2 million is cheap for advertising of this magnitude.

However ridiculous and reactionary it was, the arrest of the pair produced the best thing to come out of this debacle. The two emerged from their arraignment into a press conference, but refused to answer any reporters questions that did not deal with haircuts from the 1970s, perfectly punctuating how ridiculous everyone in a position of power was acting in relation to the situation. It’s too bad I wasn’t there, or I would’ve asked them how David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” mullet went from being an androgynous glam-rock icon to the manly redneck icon it is today.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 10:11 am and is filed under editorials, vermilion.