n So, the wolf has finally bared its fangs. We’ve all had our problems with the Turner Broadcasting Company before, but it wasn’t until recently that we all realized it (“Ad ploy mistaken as bomb scare,” Feb. 1, p. 1). As an American, I feel it is my duty to stand up and maybe help pull our tails from between our legs.

For weeks now, the same ad has been present throughout the city (among various other, more vulnerable terrorist target cities), looming over our interstates like a plague. And then, just like John Madden, boom, it hits us: that square-shaped guy flipping the bird. Well, it’s probably a terrorist plot to strike the homeland that we, as Americans, must foil.

Now, with our immense success in “VietRaq,” we all thought that terrorism was a distant (yet somehow constant) threat to our basic freedoms and our beloved capitalism. To name just one — an unimportant one, I think – the freedom of speech and expression.

But never mind these things.

What really happened in these past few weeks is that an aggressive advertising company hired artists and designers to place guerrilla ads throughout the city in high-traffic areas, essentially doing what businesses do: promote their products. The ads were crude metal frames with wires, batteries, lights and the design of a little square guy. Sounds like an electric-powered, lit-up, (small) billboard to me.

And yet, three weeks later, Boston officials decided to take emergency action, spending more than $500 thousand in eight hours to dispose of the “terrorist” threat.

It’s encouraging to know that Boston can swiftly respond to emergencies and remove any threat to its citizens. But what about when there is no threat? What about when, in reality, it took three weeks to discover and determine the nature of the danger?

Nonetheless, “Adult Swim” and its parent company, Turner, have publicly apologized for the campaign, making specific apologies to Boston (that being the only city to have paranoid reactions to the ads).

Enough of this post-9/11 baloney. With all due respect to the victims of that tragic chapter in American history, we’re running on six years now, and it’s time that Americans started living like Americans – not in terror because of terrorists.

Isn’t that what terrorists do? So until we pull our tails from our legs and start thinking realistically, the terrorists have won. Oh well, it is what it is.

Matt Goyette

SMG ’09