Kos links to the most detailed takedown of this whole Boston Cartoon Network mess that I've seen, and I haven't really been looking.

I don't think Cartoon Network did anything wrong. Period. On Countdown last night, MSNBC's terrorism expert argued that they should have "known better" than to do something like this in "today's environment," but sorry, that's bullshit.

Maybe I overstated my defense, and it does go back to the pervasiveness of entertainment options like 24 and their ability to cultivate fear, but this notion that some device that's blinking and in plain view is going to blow up is absurd, even before you get into the fact that a Space Invaders character giving you the finger is just a little over the top for a jihad. If they hate our freedoms, they're not going to come up with a clever little pop culture icon to convey that emotion.

I don't think I've seen this kind of marketing-based paranoia since the big penguin invasion scare of aught-one.

More on the story from Metroblogging Chicago, Chicagoist and Wired. And I tried to catch some of the Adult Swim bumpers last night to see if they commented on the whole imbroglio, but if they did, I missed it.

(Editor's Note: Crap. The Movable Type update seems to have demolished the "now playing" feature. But I now have tags, which I'll try to figure out how to start using forthwith.)