Aqua Teen Hunger Farce, pt. 2
I am an absolute junkie for reader comments on newspaper websites. Allowing people to post their thoughts annonymously is the quickest and most effective way to strip away the ego and superego, and get down to some quality id-powered savagery. The Herald’s coverage of the MIT student who was arrested today at Logan for wearing a circuit board on her sweatshirt, has provoked some of the best comments yet, ranging from “Tattoo“, who demands the perp be locked in a cell surrounded by photos of 9/11 victims, to “Mike,” who goes all jihad and writes, simply, “off with her head.” Something called “Carol” adds that she wouldn’t have minded if the cops had shot the girl to death.
But the irrationality isn’t limited to the Herald’s more excitable readers. The story marks the return of the feared “hoax device.” Like when Boston became the laughingstock of the country during the Aqua Teen Hunger Force scare, we’re again misunderstanding what a hoax actually is.
Details are limited about the MIT student at present, but it is known that she called the offending object “a piece of art,” which, I’d guess she was using to offer a geeky/quirky greeting for whomever she was meeting at the airport. So this business about it being a hoax is nonsense. It’s only a hoax if she pretended it was a bomb, which she did not. It was stupid of her to do it, but let’s not get hysterical. Give her community service and let’s be done with this before we make a mockery of ourselves again.
September 21st, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I agree with you, but unfortunately for us, the state legislature was apparently thinking of just such a case, because the state law on hoax devices defines a hoax device as “any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine.” It makes a similar definition for a “hoax substance.”
In other words, if a state trooper thinks your geeky, quirky little welcome-home present made of blinking lights and Play Doh looks reasonably like a “hoax device” coated in a “hoax substance,” then you can be hauled away.
September 21st, 2007 at 2:56 pm
The state law on hoax devices also requires relevant intent on the part of the accused. If she didn’t have any criminal intent (because, for example, she thought of the light-up shirt as a clearly harmless art project), then she didn’t break the law. If you ignore the person’s intent, then whether we’re breaking the law is up to the most paranoid among us, because ANYTHING could look like a bomb.
Not that the details of the law matter, since the ramifications of a felony arrest are serious and permanent even if the charges are later dismissed.
September 21st, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Is this another Boston-only over-reaction? The police should stop calling it a “fake bomb” or hoax and acting like they just stopped a terriorist attack. Her sweatshirt art looks like one of my kid’s K’Nex projects. Is my kid going to arrested if he brings a battery operated K’Nex toy to Boston?
September 21st, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Your kid won’t be arrested unless someone freaks out. But if someone does freak out, they’ll blame anyone but themselves.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:20 pm
She’s slightly foreign looking. Probably a good enough reason to shoot her about five hundred times. In the back. With a machinegun.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
The real shock for me is the news/police referring to it as a “fake bomb” and then putting piece of art in quotes. This is bad just bad journalism at best, Hegemony at worst.