Moonite Madness!

It’s hard to determine what is funnier about the brouhaha in Boston this week: the marketers who placed a series of lighted signs around that city, the grotesque over-reaction of the mayor and prosecutors, or the complete failure of the media to engage in anything resembling critical thought.
For those who missed it, here’s what happened. Adult Swim, a company owned by Turner Broadcasting, decided to stir up some hype about an upcoming movie. The movie will be a long-form version of Adult Swim’s late-night cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force. If you’ve never heard of the show, it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that two of the recurring characters in it are the moonites, a pair of moon creatures who look something like the shields in the Space Invaders arcade game. The moonites are fond of displaying their middle fingers.
To create a buzz about the upcoming movie, Adult Swim hired an ad agency. They, in turn, hired a viral marketing group that placed ads around several cities. The ads looked something like a lite-brite, and featured one of the moonites displaying his middle finger.
The glorified light-brite pictures were on display for several weeks. Then, one day, somebody decided that the brightly lit, prominently displayed picture of a moonite looked like a bomb.
Well, of course. Every good bomber knows that he should make his device as noticeable as possible.
Cue panic. Somewhere, Orson Wells was laughing hysterically as the Boston Police shut down most of the city, bomb squads detonated lite-brites, and the Mayor advised everyone to be calm.
Not long after Boston engaged Total Freak-out Mode™, the evil-doers were caught. They were quick to explain that the ads were not bombs, but an attempt to promote a movie. That did not mollify the powers-that-be in Boston. They wanted blood. And so, it appears, did the media.
The two men were charged with felonies, and released on $2,500 bonds. Meanwhile, the cable news channels, with Fox in the lead, did their best to paint them as the worst criminals since Bonnie and Clyde.
Then began the silly statements. The Prosecutor informed the media (in serious and solemn tones) that these men had designed their ads to look like bombs. Got that? They designed the brightly lit pictures of cartoon characters to look like bombs. The Prosecutor said this after they had explained that the light boxes were advertisements, designed to promote a movie, not scare people.
Not one of the reporters showed any skepticism about this patently absurd statement. Not one asked how many bombs looked like lite-brites. Not one asked why, if these men wanted to scare people by making devices that looked like bombs, they didn’t make devices that…well…looked like bombs.
But that press conference paled in comparison to the one held when the two marketers were released from jail. Rather than play the role expected of them (they had a choice, humbly apologetic or abjectly groveling) they opened by saying that they would only discuss hairstyles of the 1970s. They then refused to answer any questions that were not hair-related.
The reporters were apoplectic. They repeatedly demanded to know why they weren’t taking the situation seriously. One even implied that their refusal to answer questions could result in a longer prison sentence.
While I have no strong opinions about the marketing ploys used here, it was gratifying to see reporters get so frustrated. Their anger was a direct result of the men’s refusal to do what is expected, and give them the sound bites they needed to plug into their already-written stories. Had they chosen to act like real journalists, these reporters would have been asking whether or not the response to the ads was proportional. They would have been asking why Boston hit the panic button after the boxes had been on display for several weeks, and why other cities where the same gimmick was used hadn’t reacted. They would have asked why men who were supposedly trying to play a prank on the whole city posted to their website footage of themselves placing the boxes.
In short, they would have tried thinking critically, rather than trying to shoehorn the events into a drama suitable for a 30-second breaking news alert. They would have tried doing their jobs.
So, I’ll have to revise my initial statement. The funniest thing about the events in Boston this week is the frustration of reporters who long ago forgot that their job is ask questions and think critically, not to shape the news to be titillating.