2007 Boston Bomb Scare
On January 31, 2007, as part of a national guerrilla marketing campaign, Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, installed LED displays depicting the Mooninites in eleven different cities: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. In Boston, the authorities considered the LEDs suspicious, prompting the closure of major roads and waterways for investigation. Turner Broadcasting System later admitted placing the LEDs and apologized for the misunderstanding. In spite of the uproar, Berdovsky and Stevens mocked the media and critics in interviews while facing charges for "placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct". Subsequently, all criminal charges were dropped in exchange for Berdovsky and Stevens apologizing during their court date and accepting a plea bargain which consisted of community service at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center. Turner Broadcasting has paid the Boston Police Department one million dollars to cover the investigation's cost and an additional million for good will. This action was designed to settle criminal and civil claims, while the general manager of Cartoon Network stepped down because of the incident. Of the 10 cities in which the Lite-Brite-like LED displays were placed, only Boston saw them as a matter of concern. The installations had been up for weeks prior to the panic.
An episode from season five, titled "Boston," was produced as the series creators' response to the scare, but Adult Swim pulled it to avoid further controversy surrounding the events of the bomb scare. "Boston" has never aired, and has never been released to the public.
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Famous quotes containing the words boston, bomb and/or scare:
“The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it’s been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.”
—John Hersey (b. 1914)
“I scare him to death, I don’t have to kill him to death.”
—Willis Cooper. Rowland V. Lee. Ygor (Bela Lugosi)