RMDs (Roadside Marketing Devices): Don’t Be Scared – Be Scared

Two stories about threatening roadside devices in today’s NYT deserve a little juxtaposition. Michael R. Gordon reports on Bush administration leaks (sounds like a war-drum marketing campaign to me) about a sophisticated type of roadside bomb used by Shiite militia in Iraq. “Mounting evidence” points to Iran as the source. Richard Siklos reports that the president of the Cartoon Network, a division of the Turner Broadcasting System, has resigned over the panic created by roadside electronic devices in Boston. It’s hard to know when to be scared. It’s hard to keep the bad guys straight without a scorecard. It’s even harder to know who’s marketing what. Maybe we need a preemptive war on terror aimed at electronics. Or roads.

The confluence of these stories reminds me of a sound bite about war and sacrifice that keeps popping up in the media like a marketing slogan: “The Army goes to Baghdad. America goes to Wal-Mart.”

UPDATE 021107: First we worried about WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). Then it was IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Now there’s this new thing, the EFP (explosively formed). Let’s call the new new thing RMD (roadside marketing device).

UPDATE 021707: Columbia Journalism Review ‘s Michael Massing criticizes and Michael R. Gordon defends the Feb. 10 NYT story in the this week’s On the Media.