Me: Shoot the Boston police. And O'Reilly.
Seriously, how does Boston get to be so stupid and oblivious about an ad campaign going on in eight other cities and that started two weeks ago result in a city-wide panic?
This from the MA attorney general:
"It had a very sinister appearance," Coakley told reporters. "It had a battery behind it, and wires."
So does a pacemaker, lady. So does a walkman. The thing was a damn Lite-Brite and you guys shat your pants. Exactly where are the explosives here? Unless those lights are individually crystallized mini-dynamite or something, you're just talking out of your ass.
Same to you, Commish.
"People can be smug and say all you have to do is look at this and know this is not an explosive device, but the truth of the matter is that you can't tell what it is until it's disrupted," Davis said. "If anybody wants to volunteer to take the place of the bomb officers the next time we find a device attached to a bridge or a subway station, I'd be more than willing to take names."
I don't think so. If you can't see any explosives, and there's only lights, wires and little light bulbs on a plastic square, there's NO ROOM for a bomb.
And this whole "hoax" spin the media is putting on this situation is absurd. The thing didn't look like a bomb; there's no indication it was meant to be perceived AS a bomb- the only people who thought it was a bomb were the damn cops!
Now the governor, attorney general, police commissioner and chief, and mayor want to crucify the two dinky artists who put them up. Watch their press conference. It pretty much says it all. I like how Boston's government is so pissed about looking like fools they refuse to stop digging this hole they find themselves in.
It gets better. The mayor is so outraged he wants to
“I’m not saying we are banning the movie, because I can’t ban it, but out of respect to the people of Boston, I am going to ask local movie theater executives in the city not to show it,” Menino said. “They are not deserving of our respect, or to make one penny from their movie here.”
Yup, nothing like denying your local merchants an opportunity to make money to offset the giant hole in your budget you burned so you could blow up some toys.
This blowhard wants to deport one of the guys. And this woman compares the great tragedy and "immeasurable harm" of 1-31 to 9/11. Nothing like keeping things in perspective.
Hey lady, you want immeasurable harm? Turn on the news. Major hurricanes in Florida and people still killing each other all over the world. Get over yourself.
Then there are the people who want to blame this on marketing itself. Because apparently, people have been doing "outrageous" thing to promote products for, like, a while now! Check this out from student newspaper based out of Syracuse:
As strange as it may seem, the Mooninites are not the first instance of this unorthodox type of promoting. There are many names for it, including "guerrilla advertising" or "alternative advertising."
In fact, in the recent past it has become more and more prevalent. Nowadays it is not uncommon for a soon-to-be-released film to have its own page on Myspace.com. Kevin Smith, director and star of last year's "Clerks II" promised the first 10,000 people who friended the film's Myspace profile their names would roll in the credits on the silver screen.
In 2005, "House of Wax" producer Joel Silver developed a marketing scheme playing off the infamy of one of the film's stars, Paris Hilton. Before the release of the film, Los Angeles was flooded with the phrase, "See Paris Die on May 6," on posters, billboards and even T-shirts.
Even more extreme is the stunt 20th Century Fox pulled to promote the future cult comedy, "Office Space," in 1999. The studio stuck an unlucky man in a glass cubicle atop the roof of an abandoned building in New York City. The promotion garnered much attention and support from surrounding office buildings, local businesses and even radio shock-jockey, Howard Stern.
That same year, "The Blair Witch Project" blurred the lines of fiction and reality when the film's audience and visitors of its official Web site bought into claims that the events in the "documentary" were real and completely true.
However, these marketing schemes and publicity stunts are simply new-school iterations of an old-school strategy. Director/producer William Castle, considered by many to be the godfather of unorthodox marketing, set the bar in 1959 when he wired the seats in certain theaters to deliver electric shocks to the audience of his film "The Tingler."
And clearly the only appropriate response to all this is to call in the bomb squad. Thanks for showing us the way, Boston. Morons.
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