Our Long, National Mooninitemare

Dave Weigel, in Reason, nails the inanity of the Ignignokt and Err controversy spiraling out of Boston.

Not all public manias are acceptable. This one is. After a terror scare, the scared -- in this case Boston Mayor Thomas "Mumbles" Menino, some Bostonians, and the national media -- don't ask whether they overreacted. This is impossible; you can never overreact to terrorism. Those terrified mayoral statements to cameras are defensible, not uninformed. Those bright, red, clanging news alerts are informing the public, not exploiting viewers' basest fears. Does the hyping of bomb threats make urbanites more skittish and more likely to report a souped-up lite brite as a "suspicious device"? It doesn't matter. As Brian Doherty noted yesterday, panicked civilians calling to report those lite brites are considered a "perfect example" of "taking part in Homeland Security."

It's strange logic. The Bostonian who called in the phony threat is considered diligent, even though citizens in every other location where advertisers place the lite brites got the jokes.

It's worth noting that Menino took exactly this same overheated and especially incomprehsensible tone when Sony launched the PS3.