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Cartoon Network CEO Resigns Over Aqua Teen Scare
DesertBlade writes "Jim Samples, CEO of Cartoon Network, has resigned over the bomb scare prompted by the Aqua Teen marketing campaign. Turner (CN's parent company) ended up paying over 2 million in restitution to the city of Boston, and a man with a thirteen year record at the company has lost his job. Though many people have been citing this as 'the ultimate successful advertising campaign', there have obviously been real consequences from the incident." By virtue of the consequences of the campaign, was this now officially a bad idea? Or is your opinion that this is all far too much knee-jerking? Have your say in the comments.
It's highly likely that if this had happened on September 10, 2001, there wouldn't have been this kind of uproar. But in a post-9/11 U.S.A., the authorities have to assume things like this could be terrorist in nature and respond as if they were. Just because it's cartoony doesn't mean it should be taken less seriously. If we took that attitude, next thing you know, you'd be getting shredded by a Hello Kitty full of C4 and nails.
I think it's cool that he is taking responsibility instead of cleaning house. He can afford to go without a salary for a good while, and the rest of his accomplishments as CEO will probably earn him a nice position once the smoke clears. The marketing guys who would have been sacrificed if he cleaned house instead, are probably just living to the edge of their means on 5-figure salaries. And if his replacement cleans house, at least he's earned them some time to prepare for the axe.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Clearly it was an overreaction and someone in Boston should have resigned/been fired instead. See here http://www.dailynews.com/ci_5180780 (via http://www.schneier.com/) for a way to dispose of bombs in a way without shutting down a major metropolitan area.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
That's right kids - we're one step away from failing to have the ability to sort by color and shape. How did it come to pass that Lite Brites shut down the city of Boston?
The government has been very successful in scaring the public into thinking that the terrorism threat is real. The fact is, more people have died from lightning strikes in the past fifty years than from terrorist acts on American soil. This is fueled by the new status of new media as entertainment rather than information, which creates a sea of idiotic speculation before any facts are actually discovered. Witness the media trial of the man accused of Jon Benet's murder, or any of the number of bomb scares that have turned out to be simple security breaches.
There's no simple solution, but I think we as a society need to admit first that we have a problem.
The Boston media screwed up. The Boston Officials Screwed up. The two schmoes who put the signs up will pay for that as they're charged with everything from littering to having bad haircuts (real charge: making city officials look foolish). Big media tosses a bit of pocket change around to make sure things don't get any higher than the two dudes already arrested. And the exec at the cartoon network is fired because the cost of the advertising campaign exceeded the value of the show. So while the Boston Media and Officials try to convince themselves that two million dollars proves they were right, the rest of the country has pretty much concluded that Boston is one supremely messed up city.
Did I miss anything?
Seriously folks, I understand that people are still all sorts of freaked out over a terrorist attack which happened in the US over 5 years ago, but it is time to chill out and not be so uptight about anything which may be suspicious.
b g?articleid=180349), and have been focusing entirely on a silly marketing stunt which didn't hurt anyone. Honestly people, do most terrorists even know where Boston is? It isn't exactly the biggest city in the US, nor does it have any huge symbols of American Imperialism such as the World Trade Center. It has a couple of nice universities, but do you thing the terrorists care at all about those?
These 38 lighted signs which were mistaken for bombs, never should have made the news. They did not look like bombs in any way shape or form, and had been in place for a considerable amount of time before people started going apeshit over them. People seem to fail to mention the "real" fake bombs which were planted in Boston on the same day (http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.
Security will never come through "preparedness" against an enemy which doesn't care whether it lives or dies. If terrorists/crazy dictators/serial killers/thugs want to kill you badly enough, they probably will. The only way we will ever be secure is to make people not want to harm us
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
It's because it's Boston, and that's the only reason why this happened. Don't forget, what part did Boston play in 9/11? Boston's the city whose security was so fucked up, they let the terrorists onto the planes. Boston is the city that caused 9/11. Not surprisingly, after being the primary cause of the worst terrorist attack on United States soil, Boston is a little jumpy about terrorism.
But other than causing 9/11, what else is Boston known for?
Well, there's always wasting billions of federal tax dollars to bury a highway to improve the city skyline, which lead to
crushing a woman when three-ton ceiling tiles that had been glued to the ceiling fell.
Apparently Boston wasted billions of federal dollars, only to glue three-ton concrete ceiling tiles to their tunnel.
If you want to look at government waste and horrible mismanagement, look no further than Boston. The only reason this happened is because Boston is run by incompetent idiots. The part 9/11 had with this is that 9/11 is Boston's most well known failure, one that they're not eager to repeat.
..."the terrorists have won".
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Sony could put up a PSP campaign saying "white is right"...
But these guys are getting fined and losing jobs over something that was truly harmless?
Don't thank Boston, thank the retards who run it. I just live there.
If real attacks come, they'll be like Madrid. You won't know it until it happens, it'll be in a crowded place, during rushhour, and there won't be any ambiguity or warning. Boom, and it's done, and lots of people will be dead. And there's little chance of stopping it. That's life, and it fucking sucks, but here's what I can tell you for sure:
They won't be leaving fucking light-brites at the side of the road.
Some things just aren't plausible.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
(Meanwhile, in the parallel universe where these things actually were bombs)
COME ON! It's a huge pile of electronics with a display that's giving you the finger! What retard would possibly not know it's a bomb?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
"In this post-9/11 world, the advertising agency should've:
1) made sure they had permission from the landowners before they placed their ads
2) given the police a heads-up along with photos
3) given the major media a "this is not a story but people may call you about it" heads-up, since people tend to call papers when they see things like bombs"
In the post 911 world, terrorist groups would start off small, and make things like this commonplace, so no one would think about them. Pull your head out of your ***.
Plastic devices with flashing lights or timing devices? Tell me you DID not say that.
"Hey Mr. Mayor, we have this cool idea to advertise our crap electroniclally, strapped to
public property...pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..." ONLY an idiot would
espouse such drivel.
what the fuck are you talking about? If Boston doesn't freak out at least a little bit, what keeps other companies from launching the same types of campaigns at taxpayer expense? the freakout is what fucking caused the fucking taxpayer expense, numbnuts
In this post-9/11 world...
In a post-Hitler world, should we allow just any idiot with a radical idea to speak freely?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Its quite obvious that the high-strung nut-jobs in Boston over-reacted. The EXACT SAME ads were in Atlanta for a week before they were installed in Boston and on the very first night in Boston people were crying that it was 9/11 times a million!!! They didn't even bother taking the ads in Atlanta down until a couple of days after everybody freaked out in Boston and still not a single person thought they were a bomb.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Uh, no.
c e#Boston_advertising_bomb_scare
This exact same public advertising campaign took place in nine other cities with enough brain cells to force a fart out of their asses, and not rampantly overreact to OMG!!!! PINK PONIES FLIPPIN' ME THE BOMB PACK BIRD!!1111 In fact, they had enough brains not to react at all.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_Teen_Hunger_For
The Boston PD and its authorities are Proof #1 of Einstein's theory that "two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
Yes, I forgot to say that my opinion on the situation was limited to the known universe. Thanks for catching that for me, though. In that parallel universe, your post might have had a point.
I think what the GP was trying to say is that the expense would have been much lower had the people in charge thought things through a little more rationally. And don't go telling me that they had every right to act the way they did - like chickens with their heads cut off: they're paid to be leaders and they should act as such.
I, for one, find it incredibly disturbing that authorities could mistake this for a bomb. That, to me, shows that they are ill-prepared. I've heard many times how they "still had to take it seriously" but they didn't. Anyone *competent* should've known several reasons why it wasn't a bomb:
* No source of shrapnel, that plus the odd placing makes them incredibly ineffective as anti-personnel weapons.
* They're WAY too small to cause structural damage, even if the batteries were supposed to be shaped charges. I'm sorry, but I don't see an explosive that size as being able to even scratch a bridge like that.
* No payload -- batteries don't explode (Sony's catch on fire, at most) and even if they did, and even if they were shaped charges, they're oriented completely wrong on the device, so I don't see how they were supposed to cause anti-personnel damage.
* You do NOT call attention to a device like that with blinking lights. SOME of us would know it was a bomb even if it had a cartoon on it and others would assume it was one anyhow. Now, it's true that the IRA used to do something somewhat similar, but what they did was have a small explosion to attract rescue workers & such, then a larger one to kill them. You don't attract people with blinking lights, you'd never be able to properly time the explosion unless you were standing there, waiting to get caught.
So what have we learned here? Hopefully that a terrorist's purpose is to cause terror.
Every time you panic, the terrorists win.
> COME ON! It's a huge pile of electronics with a display that's giving you the finger! What retard would possibly not know it's a bomb?
:] Well, a competent bomb squad, like those found in all the other cities...
The kind who knows that real bombs have payloads. The kind that knows that a device that small isn't going to cause structural damage to something like a bridge even if it was 100% high explosive. The kind who knows that they were very, very poorly placed as anti-personnel devices, called unnecessary attention to themselves, and probably wouldn't have been able to kill anyone at all, unless that person had been standing right next to them.
You know, the kind of person who might be found on a bomb squad
--
Every time you panic, the terrorists win.
And it has some choice quotes, like this one:There, proof that both residents and officials of the Pacific Northwest are smarter/less paranoid the residents/officials of Boston.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Most of the comments here are of the mindset that the reaction was absolutely justified - that they should have seen it coming - that anyone in their right mind would have assumed those were bombs.
Its amazing to me how this state of paranoia and fear has not only become so widespread, but ACCEPTED even - as if everything really changed on 9/11. Here's a fact for you: NOTHING CHANGED AFTER 9/11. The ONLY thing that is different in America is the amount of surveillance we are being subjected to and the number of rights that are being eroded before our eyes.
More people die every year from peanut allergies or swimming pool accidents than terrorism. Terrorism IS NOT A BIG THREAT. Beyond that, it is IMPOSSIBLE to completely stop. The war on terror is a FARCE and its SOLE PURPOSE is to subjugate a nation enslaved by comfort and convenience - with their consent.
The people who should have to pay for this are the idiots who overreacted. Did you see those signs? THEY LOOKED LIKE LITE-BRITES and had a CARTOON ALIEN FLIPPING THE BIRD. What muslim extremist would use that as their terrifying logo of doom?!?!
HOW THE HELL DID YOU PEOPLE GET THIS WAY!? AREN'T YOU LOOKING AT THE WORLD AROUND YOU?! Don't you see how absofuckinglutely ridiculous it is to consider the reaction to these HARMLESS and FUNNY signs in any way justifiable?
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" - Thomas Jefferson
Chew on that.
Mod parent up.
I live in Boston. The city screwed up, badly. Pretty much everyone I know thinks city officials made us look completely ridiculous. This was not a case of reasonable precautions, even, as they say, in a post-9/11 world.
All these people keep saying "But it could have been a bomb, you don't know!" or "Well if it had been a bomb, you'd be glad they responded the way they did!"
No. I agree wholeheartedly with the parent here. It couldn't have been a bomb. Literally, physically, something that looks like those devices could not possibly be an explosive device of any serious power, nothing that poses any danger to any structure or even any human who wasn't essentially holding them in his hands.
An ordinary person off the street might not know this. That's fine. But a bomb squad member damn well better know this, and it terrifies me that the bomb squad members in our city apparently don't. What the hell are they going to do if there is a real bomb, and they have to try and disable it without blowing up anything important? If they don't even have the basic grasp required to know there should be a payload, what exactly do they know about the construction of bombs? Seriously, I'm not nearly as bothered by the possibility of some terrorists planting a bomb as I am knowing that if there is a bomb, our trained professionals whose job it is to handle that sort of thing won't be able to do anything about it, even if they know where the bomb is and have plenty of extra time. What the hell is the bomb squad for?
I am the man with no sig!
[Quote] What do you think would have happened if a cop caught one of these guys in the act of placing the thing?[/Quote] They would have given them a ticket for a few hundred dollars and told them to take it down. Now, they are facing years in prison and their lives ruined.
Anybody who's ever been stuck in traffic can understand the knee-jerk "those bozos should pay" response.
But anybody who cares about national security and terrorism should be sobered by what happened in this case: an utter failure of threat assessment. Our ability to survive terrorism is not just reliant on the ability to detect and respond to threats: it's crucial to be able to detect the lack of threats and not respond to them.
What Boston demonstrated is that they are ripe for terrorism. After all, terrorism is about creating terror, not about inflicting actual damage. Boston showed you can terrorize them with some children's toys and no explosives at all.
Of course, the knee-jerk conservative reaction will also include the phrase "abundance of caution" and "we can't take any chances". The problem is if you have an abundance of caution and can't take any chances, then a real terrorist action can have you dancing all over the place trying to respond to decoy threats and missing the real action.
Correctly assessing situations that are not threatening is just as important to security as correctly assessing situations that are.
I think this quote, by the Attorney General of the State of Massachusetts, Martha Coakley, sums up the overreaction and the unwillingness to look at the situation rationally:
(My source for that quote is a Boston Globe article.)
Oooooooh! Batteries and wires!! Run away!
My feeling is this: if I lived in the state, I'd damn well make sure I stayed away from Radio Shack, because I'm likely to get caught in the crossfire when someone buys a few electronics components and the SWAT team comes in to take out the "terrorist" with a storm of bullets. Have these people never, ever seen a homemade electronics project before!? For God's sake, MIT is located in their state!
Should one be jailed and fined millions of dollars for plugging in an alarm clock at a public place? Littering, perhaps. Vandelism? Probably not.
The truth is that a car parked underneath a bridge is a much more realistic and simple solution for a terrorist. However, the city isn't calling out the bomb squad for every car parked under a bridge. In fact, I cannot think of more than one case that I've heard about where such an event has happened. I wonder why this hasn't happened more?
Really, the line should be drawn somewhere, and I think that line is 'common sense'. I think that this is a case of misunderstandings. The artists were too naive, they underestimated the stupidity of other people. The city reacted based on THEIR OWN concerns. This was not a hoax, the devices were not bombs, they weren't intended to look like bombs. Could some people mistake them as bombs? Apparently. However, I do not believe that one should be legally responsible for the mistaken actions and responses of another. The artists did break some laws, but nothing more than vandelism, trespassing, or littering.
Is this the result of the last presidental elections when Kerry was called a 'flip-flopper'? You know, sometimes people make mistakes. Maybe the city of Boston should realize that and consider changing their stance. Sometimes it is better to admit mistakes and correct one's actions, rather than carry a bad idea forward just because you're afraid of a little change. For that matter, I'd rather have a "flip flopper" as president than one that can't admit that they were mistaken in their judgements and decisions, and continues to drive our country forward like a Lemming off a cliff.
Yeah. You're an idiot.
I live in Boston. On Massachusetts Avenue (a major thoroughfare, after Tremont, Huntington, Boylston, Commonwealth, etc.). There was no panic. There was no particular congestion. I didn't even hear about it until someone called me and told me to watch the news.
If you think the Boston PD is stupid for calling the bomb squad in when they find electronic devices they're unfamiliar with UNDER A BRIDGE, then I don't know what to say to you.
Hindsight is 20/20. What would you have said if they HAD been bombs and the Boston police had left them alone... because of why? Because they looked like Spongebob? Because they were flipping you off? What one of those reasons would be satisfactory for you to excuse the PD of ignoring a suspicious-looking device?
I KNOW I don't even look like a bomb, but I've been stopped by the police for hanging out under bridges. They're sensitive places. Don't be a douchebag just because 9 other cities didn't do their jobs.
We live in a culture that has become so paranoid that we've traded freedom for "security."
Maybe it was, indeed, a bone-head idea to "tag" public spaces, but the government and media need to quit making stories out of nothing. There's plenty of stupidity to go around on this one.
The clue phone is ringing:
Boston, Line 1:
Your anti-terror "heroes" went all Barney Fife over nothing. You guys just need to chill the f**k out and learn to triage terror from shennanigans. If you go the full-monty everytime some paranoid citizen dials the bomb-squad over flashing light and some wires, you're gonna have to figure out a way to pay for that kind of over-kill out of your own budget instead of drama-queening your way into restitution.
Viral Marketers, Line 2:
WTF? Maybe go for something a little less obscure the next go-round, eh? Only about 1 in 5,000 people driving by those signs had any kind of clue what the hell those bird-flipping little dudes were anyway. Way to spook the natives, dorks. Don't forget to include some useful information about your "product" next time. Seriously, this is like the corporate version of "JACKASS."
Bottom Line: Two stupid parties did two stupid things. One was the government the other wasn't. Guess which one wins?
I think Meatwad summed it up like this:
I'll touch 'em all the way to the trash can is what I'll do...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
All they wanted was to incite fear and massive panic amongst the people of the USA.
They won.
America the brave. It is to laugh.
Pffft, it's not just the Pacific Northwest.
Atlanta didn't freak out, and Atlanta has actually been bombed repeatedly by a terrorist, namely, Eric Robert Rudolph, who, started with the 1996 Olympics, then proceeded to bomb an abortion clinic and a lesbian nightclub, then moving over to Alabama for the last attack. The Olympic attack was, in fact, 'leave an unattended napsack in public'. I don't know what the others were.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I literally can't imagine a stupider response on behalf of the Boston police/gov't. I think they were legitimately confused, as to the nature of the signs, and instead of looking for a reasonable answer, let all the fox-news wolf-crying (are terrorists in your kitchen? find out tonight at eleven!) stir them into a bomb-squad frenzy. Then, I think they were so embarassed by their own resulting ineptitude and overreaction that, to save face, they went on the warpath and used their bully pulpit to cow those port advertising guys, as well as everyone at Cartoon Network. Which is a damn shame -- it's as clear a case of abuse of power as you can get. If anyone should be resigning, it's the Mayor, for infringing on freedom of speech and expression. This is not much different, honestly, than this story other than scale.
who let a poet in here?
It's a post-Hitler world, and any idiot can still run for office in a democratic election. Speaking freely is comparatively harmless.
One could argue that anyone who understands the "sad state of affairs" the United States is in would be idiotic to perpetrate such a campaign.
Things like this make it very clear all the terrorists in the world aiming at the USA can go home and leave the USA alone for a few years. They won and anything they do won't be half as bad as the imagination of American bureaucrates and the average retarded Joe. The USA can destroy itself all by it's self. Unless Bush goes out the window and the USA gets rid of the fear mongering media you guys lost. clear and simple
That line from Syriana has rung true again. The reason that Boston's response seems stupid is that you are mistaking it for what Boston authorities have claimed it to be; a response to maintain public safety. They didn't make a response to maintain public safety. They made a response to maintain the illusion that they are protecting public safety. They are not paying attention to anything more than how they appear. It's the nature of corrupt officials to seek first and foremost to protect themselves, and usually to stop when they feel they appear to have done their jobs. Whether or not they actually have done their jobs is usually unimportant to the corrupt, and in most cases is repugnant to them, in that they are then no more cagey or clever than the audience that they seek to fool.
Jim Samples should not have resigned. He did nothing wrong. His company did nothing wrong. The lawsuit and its result were unjust. But Samples rightly perceived that the public, as willing victims of globalization, had identified his company as "tur'rists", and decided that it wasn't worth himself or his employees going to a torture chamber.
The U.S.A. is full of hysterical ninnies whose sense of being American does not extend beyond cheap slogans invented by our British imperial enemy. That's why they can't see the enemy within: they have nothing left in their minds that is truly American that they can compare with Cheney, to reveal that he is totally un-American, and Bush, too, by implication, because he does everything Cheney tells him to do.
9-11 was orchestrated by the enemy within, and that enemy's agenda is globalization, the new imperialism. The Economist magazine, based in London, just released a special, boasting of the revival of the British Empire through globalization! Where is the spirit of 1776? Where is the rigorous scientific method of Benjamin Franklin, not just in his electrical experiments, but in his political intelligence and political leadership. Never satisfied with judgements based on appearances, he always sought to uncover the principles governing all the action.
Apply Franklin's method to "terrorism". Look at the vote fraud in 2000, the bigger vote fraud in 2004, the pre-inaugural rush in late 2000- early 2001 to nominate John Ashcroft for Attorney General. What is the more probable motive for 9-11: to make the U.S. submit to the rule of Osama bin Laden, or to establish a police state under Bush and Cheney, or to allow Bush and Cheney to loot the U.S. until the U.S. Treasury is no longer able to sell bonds, putting our government totally in the hands of the financial circle behind Cheney & Bush?
The lower ratings might have something to do with the fact that the show is in its off-season right now. My guess is that these ads were in fact for the upcoming movie. I find it odd that Forbes didn't mention either fact.
Have some perspective. On September 11, one well funded terrorist organization succeeded in making an attack. 3,000 people died, about the number of people that die in traffic accidents every two weeks. I'm just not seeing the demonstrations over outlawing cars. At Columbine, about 20 people were killed on one day, but thats about how many kids hang themselves accidentally in mini blinds every day, did you take down your mini-blinds. Terrorism relies on the press to sensationalize an item. The politicians volley the fear back and forth, making more and more laws for the sake of making laws to look effective. The result is that a few good laws are enforced and obeyed. Many silly laws are ignored. This leads to anarchy. Welcome to Iraq.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.