Palindrome wrote:

The head of the Cartoon Network resigned Friday following a marketing stunt that caused a terrorism scare in Boston and led police to shut down bridges and send in the bomb squad.

He said he regretted what had happened and felt ''compelled to step down, effective immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch.''

This seems a little drastic for the situation

Not to be one to mince words, I'll call it "chickenshit" outright.

Boston PD, simply put, overreacted in the extreme and the media helped it along by spinning a tale to the public that bears almost no resemblance to the facts. These devices were not hidden. They did not have a profusion of exposed wiring. They were, to the casual observer and "reasonable person" quite harmless looking. There was no mention made that these "devices" were being found all over the city and not just in "suspicious locations". Only an obsessed lunatic would declare these to be a bomb and refer to them to the media as a "hoax".

By stepping down, this man only reaffirms the falsehood propagated by the Boston Police--that the creators of the campaign were trying to scare people, that the creators of the campaign were somehow at fault for the behaviour of some police officers allowing stupidity and humorlessness to reign supreme, that the creators, not the media and the police, created a panic to cover for their lack of initiative and intelligence.

Ten years ago, this would have been reviled as bureaucratic stupidity at it's worst.

Ten years ago, we were the same country as we are now.

...the only difference is that now the madmen are running the asylum (at least in Boston).

RE: Cartoon Network Chief Quits Over Marketing Stunt - New York Times