Pretty pitiful display by the Herald and the Globe today. The scapegoats got almost all of their attention, probably because they didn’t answer the idiotic “how do you feel” questions of the press corps — maybe because they have bad hair: huge pictures of the Terror Toons Two.
Little discussion of the real stories: the real fake pipe bomb at Tufts New England Medical Center and the “unknown cylindrical device near the Longfellow Bridge,” and the startling reaction of the Boston police — who can’t tell a light-brite from a bomb — compared to their peers in other major cities who can. Yesterday’s money quote from Reuters in the Globe:
Authorities blew up one of them.
I feel so much safer now.
The media should take this story seriously, rather than focusing on its least-important aspect: whether the scapegoats were smirking or not. Prosecutors should drop, or at least downgrade, their charges against the minimum wagers, and file charges against the bosses at Interference marketing if they really did deliberately prolong the chaos. Boston should make sure the check from Turner is as large as possible, and invest some of the money in training courses for our bomb disposal and emergency management teams.
It seems like much of the time I ride the T these days (its less since the fare hike) there is an announced delay due to a “Police Action”, as there was on the Orange line yesterday approaching the NEMC stop. The train sat at Ruggles for quite a while as garbled announcements were made. I started trying to figure out how to get off the train and still meet my community health nursing clinical group on time, and what I would say to weave in the occurance of yet another “police action” affecting public transit as a facet of life in the city.
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What they found at NEMC certainly is more relevent to public safety but I guess doesn’t make it more newsworthy to the MSM.
This entire ordeal is so rediciolus; the Boston authorities waste taxpayers money because of their incompetence and then they try to save their ass by putting all the blame on the kids who put up these imrpovised light bright devices. Maybe we could ultimately save money by shelling out more to hire people who are competent enough to do their jobs.
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This is the first time I have ever felt ashamed to live in Massachusetts. Everyone is laughing at us across the nation and we can’t even recognize that the core issue is a fact we’ve been aware of for a long time- our authorities have no integrity.
Wake me up when the silliness ends.
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In ten cities a few flashing advertisements were found. Some were not noticed, some disposed of, and, in Boston, the power of the criminal justice system was brought to bear upon the perpetrators. I’m about as impressed as I was when the police arrested a window washer that killed an attacking seagull while children in Boston were being shot down daily. Great police work then and great police work now? I’ve heard it said that “ounce of image is worth a pound of performance”. With all the scandals that visit the Boston and State police it is refreshing that they can divert attention from reality to “Wackie World”.
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The real villains are a couple of (dull-witted?) day laborers that had to be arrested and “showed no respect to the press or the criminal justice system”, we’re told. Maybe they were tired of watching the Emperor in his new clothes. Just maybe this was just a little stage play to enhance the standing of our criminal justice system. So now our law enforcement professionals don’t have to clean up their own act, fight real crime, or show any respect for the law-abiding public. Bravo.
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At least Boston’s mayor was honest about the whole deal. He just wants money. Lots of money. How much did this whole thing cost? Probably a lot less than a terrorist training exercise. (Invaluable training?) Who suffered the most? The poor commuters, workers and hospital patients? They won’t get a thin dime.
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Many years ago I remember a famous bookie joint that was next to the city hall of a major city. It had been there since anyone could remember and frequented by the locals to include the city hall employees. One day a Letter-to-the-Editor was published by the local paper complaining that this bookie joint was operating with impunity. A week later, a new store opened in a previously vacant building and the telephone company installed many phones, cardboard boxes full of papers were delivered and a bunch of winos were sent in. Lo and Behold! The state police raided this new “bookie joint”. (The real bookie joint was never touched.) The headlines read, “Police Close Notorious Bookmaking Operation.”
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“The more thing change, the more they remain the same”.
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is on target. That’s what the press is angry at. But why the hell should anyone respect the press or justice system in this case?
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I loved the guys’ performance.
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“Hey,” said the blow-dried bimbos who aren’t journalists but play them on TV, “You’re not saying your lines! You’re supposed to play along and pretend we were all justified for barking in terror like shaved poodles! You have to express ‘contrition’ and apologize. Then we can make smug remarks about your hair and performance art and young people today, and then we can grudgingly allow you to redeem yourselves. Maybe you could throw in something about being abused children. Come on, dammit! Say your lines!”
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Instead, the guys said, “This is a farce. You are a farce.”
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And they were right.
…as soon as they start respecting the public back.
“Massachusetts: Still not as corrupt as Rhode Island, but working hard to catch up!”
Were they over-zealously added to the script? With or without approval? Are they like unregistered, unlicensed guns in a police “search”? Were they “real fakes” or just a piece of pipe? We’ll probably never know as this seems to be destined to be forgotten.
If we don’t learn more about them, that makes them appear to be some invented story to justify the panic.
this issue?
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…this whole brouhaha could likely have been avoided if the idiots that were in charge of the “advertising campaign” had notified city officials ahead of time, and sought permission to engage in the “advertising campaign.”
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The people who are to blame for this are those who instigated the “advertising campaign,” regardless of who–in retrospect might have over-reacted.
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Hindsight might be 20-20, but foresight isn’t.
Let’s get back to coverage of this debacle. It underscores what’s happening–right before our eyes–to the Boston print media. Boston Globe-Boston Herald: Owned by moguls, written by interns. Example. Globe front section today, Colin Nickerson:
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“AMSTERDAM — In a city famous for pot and prostitutes….”
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How about:
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Boston — In a city famous for gang violence and corrupt politicians….
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Nationally, we have C- media covering a D- administration.