Of course, it's rather ironic that CNN is, of course, a close brother in the corporate family tree to Cartoon Network. They're both in the Turner Broadcasting area of Time Warner.

That is kind of funny and a perverse part of me wonders if that's how this was finally "revealed." Once photographs hit the AP surely somebody (SOMEBODY) at CNN would have recognized one of the show's icons...

I also like that one of the officials quoted freely admits that this was "a huge waste of money" or something to that effect. I understand it's better to be safe than sorry, but since these lighted signs weren't attached to anything explosive (or any dummy explosives, obviously) a good 10 minutes of investigation should have sufficed to prove that even if they didn't know what they were, they weren't explosives.

I still find it a bit difficult to believe that anyone could confuse an array of LEDs placed quite prominently on a building (at least in the photos I saw it was hard to miss) and arranged to look like Ignignokt and Err with their middle digits upraised with something that is likely to explode.

Fucking excellent.

If the city pursues a civil lawsuit that would be just entirely unfair. These signs were in place for three weeks without a problem, then one day some imbecile decides it must be terrorism and shuts down the city.

Sounds to me like whoever made that call without bothered to even LOOK at the thing (a cursory glance, I remain convinced, would provide evidence enough that there were no explosive possibilities) should be the one disgraced. Not Cartoon Network.

Bloody hell.

It's called a knight, actually, Fry...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070209/ap_on_bi_ge/suspicious_devices

The head of the Cartoon Network resigned Friday following a marketing stunt that caused a security scare in Boston. [...] Samples said he felt "compelled to step down, effective immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch."

For crying out loud, it wasn't intentional...he's convinced it's his fault (or at least it sounds that way) when in reality this whole mess was due entirely to the ineptitude of whoever was called in to that scene. They failed to do cursory research and--sorry I keep saying this, but it's important--it should have been immediately evident that the devices were not explosive. City-wide shutdown was unnecessary and unjustified. Why is he acting like he was caught in a genuine act of terrorism?

You just leave Aqua Teen Hunger Force to Jack Bauer...

That was really funny. And here I was thinking National Lampoon was complete shit nowadays.