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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.
Sorry, but your post mentioned the buck at the top of the list and September 11th, and I can't help but draw any subtle lines between the head of the corp and the head of the state...
Anyways, I'm glad he took the fall for it, as he most likely has savings as opposed to the young guys who actually put up signs. Another sacrifice is made to the new State of paranoia.
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Not only Boston overreacting, but now the network itself? Where are the people willing to stand up for sanity? It's truly a sad day...
That's a rather benign interpretation. Add a dash of cynicism, a sprinkling of conspiracy theroism and a few tinfoil hats as a garnish and you could easily conclude that the excessive terrorism threats are a way to scare populations into submitting to government control. I think High Chancellor Suttler said it best in the movie V for Vendetta:
"What we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country. This message must be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television. This message must resound throughout the entire Interlink. I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want every man woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos! I want everyone to remember why they need us!"
Everyone should see that movie, and then take a good, hard look around them.
I hate printers.
I posted a similar reply to a different post earlier, but the difference is in Boston a few of the the second round of the litebrites were put on critical infrastructure--including *underneath* both the BU and Longfellow bridges (the latter of which turned out to be something coincidentally reported and not related to ATHF) and more seriously at the bus stop at the Sullivan Square T station 20ft up on the the main pillar supporting the elevated I-93 right above it...an obvious target if you wanted to kill people stuck in traffic and cause major transportation disruption.
I'm reasonably sure NYPD would have freaked out if one was reported as an unknown electronic device on the (distinctly longer) GW or Brooklyn bridges. None in NYC were in subway stations or critical infra--the most concerning was on a highway onramp.
And, most importantly, LEDs are freaking scary! Boo!
I for one find it highly disturbing that the things were in place for days before the were "discovered". If it had been a real bomb they would have gone off without anybody noticing.
evil is as evil does
As much as I hate Boston, they don't deserve full credit for the epic level of pork-barreling that went on with the bog Dig. That went through all sorts of state and Federal politics as well. It's also not fair to call them 'incompetent", most of them are very competent, very intelligent people who get a lot done... the problem is that their job isn't to responsibly run the city of Boston, it's to make themselves as wealthy as possible in the shortest amount of time, at taxpayer expense if at all possible. That said, you forgot to mention a couple of other events in Boston's "illustrious" history. First, there's Shay's Rebellion, a local uprising from my neck of the woods (Pittsfield-Amherst-Springfield area) that many historians cite as one of the major motives behind the U.S. Constitution (prior to that, the same function was served by the Articles of Confederacy); a bunch of Revolutionary War veterans and farmers armed themselves and captured an armory in an attempt to overthrow the government, before being slaughtered by mercenaries hired by the Boston plutocrats who were simultaneously collecting exorbitant rent and arbitrarily raising taxes in order to pay themselves higher salaries. They were, in effect, running half of the Commonwealth's area as an enormous sharecropping plantation, raping Western Massachusetts for all it was worth in order to keep Boston, where they all spent most of their time, well funded and to expand the industrial efforts that were beginning in the Central and Northeastern parts of the state (Worcester-Lowell). You also forgot to mention the Quabbin Reservoir: four small towns in the Swift River Valley were forcibly depopulated, the people who lived there paid a fraction of the value of their land and left to find new homes, and then the valley was flooded and a subterranean aqueduct nearly 25 miles long was dug just to bring water to the SECOND largest reservoir in the Commonwealth. The homes and livelihoods of the people living in the area were deemed to be worth less than providing Boston, which had long ago completely depleted its own natural resources, with more water to waste. Oh, and boy am I glad that my taxes mostly go to funding unnecessary local projects in Boston, despite that I don't spend any time there, I live closer to the capitals of two other states, and the towns around here are all starved for funding because well over half of all available state aid goes to just one Metropolitan area. People wonder why I get angry when I tell them I live in Massachusetts, and they ask "near Boston?"
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
That's the part about this that pisses me off the most. Okay, sure, the Lite-Brights are out of the ordinary (at least for being hung up about the city). I can even see how such a device could be seen as a threat to some self important official with a stick up his ass, and would not entirely blame them for doing something about it. The fact that they went completely over the top with this and started trying to prosecute people is not understandable. Why is it so hard for them to admit they were wrong? If they had just said "Oops, yeah, these things are pretty harmless. We apologize for the scare." there would be no problems and no media circus.
I don't quite remember where they were all placed but even if they were placed around an airport, I still personally think it's an overreaction simply on technical grounds. Given the size of the devices, they would have to be attached to a plane or be within several dozen feet to cause any noteworthy damage, even if they were pure C4. Since none of them were placed on airport grounds, they posed absolutely no threat to aircraft.
Q. Is it forseeable that pouring boiling water on a person will cause burns.
A. Yes
Q. Is it forseeable that pouring boiling water on a person will cause an earthquake in Uganda.
A. No.
Q. Is it forseeable that a lite-brite advertisement placed w/o permission will get taken down and a fine sent to the party who put it up w/o permission?
A. Yes
Q. Is it forseeable that a lite-brite advertisement placed w/o permission will cause an entire city to "duck and cover".
A. No
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good