Um...The Tedster hasn't been involved at all with Turner Broadcasting for several years now, since he (a) sold it to Time Warner and (b) retired from TW to devote full time to his family and philanthropy. If you want someone to smack, bop on over to the Turner website and look up the head of programming...or maybe the head of the advertising department.

Yeah, I know. But it's his fault anyway. (I'm not a Turner fan. Could you tell?)

Let's slap 'em all.

this made network news (ABC) tonight, which also presented it as stupid.

Judging from the amount of press it's receiving, I would say that the advertising campaign was a complete success.

A city that is paralyzed because of LED cartoon characters? Puhlease

With all due respect, I think it's your city who are the idiots, not Turner Broadcasting. The objects in question had blinking lights on them, just like all the bombs in the movies. Exactly how likely it is that actual bombs-in-reality would sport such features? Exactly not likely at all, replies everyone with an IQ above room temperature.

As agrumer observed, "The city of Boston was shut down today not because of devices that looked like bombs, but because of devices that looked like Hollywood fake representations of bombs."

All of that is undoubtedly true...and they all had cartoon characters waving a jauntily raised middle finger at people, too.

But if someone who doesn't know a whole lot about electronics sees something like a circuit board-covered box located on a bridge that carries a lot of traffic, and if that board is then found to have 9 twins in *other* high-traffic locations, there is likely to be consternation. Freakiness, even.

And nothing in our modern age precludes bombs from having jaunty cartoon characters on them. I'm pretty sure that'll be a plot device in a Clancy book coming soon.

yeah, S. is chortling about using this in class...