Boston: Pansy Metropolis or Safety City?

Many of you have probably heard by now of the mass chaos in Boston yesterday due to a viral advertising scheme by Turner Broadcasting. Supposedly the city was shut down and there was tremendous chaos everywhere, though I didn't catch any of that. Two artists have been arrested. Last night I saw some small pictures of these devices that were placed around town, and my reaction was, how stupid could these people be, if you put things like this on bridges all over the place of course people are going to think that they're bombs. But this morning I read the Globe and saw a better picture of what these things are...and although I think Turner Broadcasting should have definitely informed local authorities that they were doing this ahead of time, I must say that Boston is such a namby-pamby city for reacting to this in the way that it did. I mean, basically this is proof that the terrorists have won, no? If I were walking down the street and saw one of these things I would have thought it was some kind of art installation. It looks like a freaking Lite Brite. You can say it's a generational thing, and there's truth to that. But it's kind of outrageous that it took so long to figure out that these things were harmless. And now two artists are being arrested? Jesus H. Christ. Of course it's the poor artist schlep who pays for the crime of the multibillion dollar corporation. I think it says something, though, that this ad campaign was going on in many cities across the nation, and Boston is the only city that got its panties in a bunch over it. Sheesh.

Update: I'm glad to see this quick reaction to the artists' arrest.