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"The Boston Bomb Scare: Youth Culture as Terrorist threat"
by Zane Scheuerlein

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer
rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their
legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.

At first read you might attribute the above quote to the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live or maybe a recent Miss Manners column. In fact, this quote is credited to Socrates and was written during the 5th, not 21st century. It seems that adults have had problems with youth behavior throughout history.

Still, it is widely acknowledged that with the invention of Rock-n-Roll, the relationship between the youth and adult worlds took a new turn. Youth developed their own individually defined and distinctive culture, apart from adults. It led to the formation of a radical new language and attitude displayed not only through music but also through appearance, style, expression and icons. In the sixties, political engagement, youth culture and music became intertwined.

Rock music was considered radical and distasteful by much of the adult world at the time. But those same longhaired hippies who were once told by elders to “cut your hair” and “love it or leave it” are now adults. Some of them are music producers and corporate executives who make millions off the selling of youth culture and some are city officials, lawyers and police officers.

One would think that the same people who invented youth culture would have developed an understanding and sensitivity toward young people that their own elders denied them. And yet the “generation gap” continues to instill outrage, disgust and fear in the hearts of many, a reality made glaringly apparent in a recent series of events known as the Boston Bomb Scare. And what is the symbol of this latest scare? Youth culture icons — the Mooninites.

It began in December 2006, when Turner Broadcasting, the producers of Adult Swim, a popular late night block of animated shows geared towards teens and college students, authorized two artists to create and disperse magnetic, LED light grids featuring the shows’ characters. Icons of the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force were displayed throughout eleven cities on buildings, overpasses and discreet sites in an urban marketing campaign to promote the upcoming movie. Weeks after the signs were put up, a morning commuter decided that it was his patriotic duty to bring public attention to what he perceived as a potential terrorist plot to bring down the city of Boston. When the city received this call they sprung into action, spending upwards of a million dollars by shutting down bridges and highways and using counter-charges to blow up the small plastic signs that resembled Lite-Bright toys. Attorney General Martha Coakley defended the city’s actions in a public statement saying that the devices appeared to be “sinister” and the characters displayed were very “suspicious.” She concluded, “The placement, the appearance with the batteries and wires indicated that this did not have an innocent purpose”.

Fox News picked up the story in an almost surreal frenzy of sensationalist reporting; frequently alarming viewers that terrorism may be afoot. Meanwhile, Turner Broadcasting, which operates Cartoon Network both of which are owned by Time-Warner, the same parent company as Fox Television, informs their colleagues down the hall that the signs were just a harmless ad campaign, which they themselves had commissioned and approved.

Even after this admission, Boston police chief announced on Fox-News that “It is one of many leads we are looking into.” The idea that these cartoon icons in their Lite-Brite encasements could be the work of a large media empire did not seem feasible. As the evidence mounted to support Turner Broadcasting’s admission, it was still youth who seemed to catch the blame.

Rather than calling it an ad campaign, Fox News labeled the placement of signs as a prank that “is not funny” and “affected the morning’s commute.” One reporter said on air, “I frankly have never seen this cartoon or know nothing about it.” Another anchor agreed, “When we first heard the ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force’, most of us said, ‘What in the world is that’?”

After the dust settled, it was time to lay blame. Rather than going after the Boston officials whose moral panic spread fear among the populace, or the parent company of Fox News and Turner Broadcasting, Time-Warner — the police arrested Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28 charging them with a felony even though they were paid by Turner Broadcasting to design and put up the signs.

When the two defendants were released on bail they were instructed by their lawyers not to discuss the details of the case before the press. Instead, they decided to hold a press conference in order to “talk about something important on their minds, namely haircuts of the 70s.” One of the arrested men sported long sets of dreadlocks as he told reporters that they would only take questions that had to do with hair, because this was a very serious concern to them. The journalists at the press conference seemed confounded by this act of performance art, which was commenting on the fact that the whole ordeal was absurd, and the result of adult paranoia. The press reacted with confused rage, noting that their actions were, “Not gaining sympathy with the press and the public.”

It is evident from watching the news reports that the anchors and people covering the story do not know anything about the cartoon or characters in question. If the Boston city officials had bothered to consult any 18-25 year old on the street, they would have quickly learned that this was an urban marketing campaign carried out by [adultswim] similar to several others that occurred in many U.S. cities without incident.

Fox News contributed to the blundering of public officials by blowing, what should have been, a blip on the radar screen completely out of proportion. As a result, they committed an unfathomable and surreal act. They reacted to youth culture as a terrorist threat.

Has the black hole separating youth and adults grown so large in our post 9/11 landscape that a cartoon character is more readily identified with Al-Qaeda than American youth?

How can the adult world attempt to know, understand and legislate the activities of youth when they don’t even understand the world we live in?

You may think that The Boston Bomb Scare is an extreme example, but in reality, as a public high school student, I confront misunderstandings of youth culture on a daily basis. We teenagers today live in an entirely different cultural and technological universe than adults. Teachers, parents and administrators in my own community often react to my generation with fear, moral panic and misunderstanding. Many adults seem to view teens who use social networking tools, play video games, watch YouTube and other obscure programs like Aqua Teen Hunger Force as “up to something”.

Some adults like Senator Ted Stevens, author of the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act say they want to curb internet access to youth as a form of protection. In another case, currently being challenged by the ACLU, the Hermitage School District suspended a 17 year-old student for ten days for parodying his principal on his MySpace page. In my book, censorship and invasion of privacy are not forms of protection.

In reality, this kind of thing is now happening all over the country. In my own high school, there have been several incidents where kids have had their Facebook and MySpace pages spied on by parents and school officials. Some of these students have been suspended or punished for making fun of teachers or doing other things that the school finds inappropriate. In true Boston bomb-scare style, they justify these actions and deny our First Amendment rights by treating youth culture as something that is “sinister” and should be feared.

Granted many teens my age are deeply engaged within a very active on-line culture —one that didn’t exist when our elders were growing up. And for the vast majority of youth, this world is not only safe, but educational, entertaining, and interactive as well. Adults should be spending more time trying to figure out how to bring the power of the internet into school settings as a motivating tool for learning rather than banning and criminalizing it. I for one, do not fear on-line predators as much as the dangerous precedent being set that schools can punish students for speech that they make outside of classroom walls. If adults really want to protect children, they should be guarding our First Amendment rights and punishing the schools that attempt to violate our freedoms.

View the links Zane references on YouTube at:

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Boston Bomb Scare

Boston bomb scare suspects press conference about Hair

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