Something I'm predicting you'll never hear.

You'll never hear anybody in any big-city government say, hey, let’s give an extra $500,000 to the schools before we have to blow it off calling out the SWAT team to diffuse some wacky cartoon marketing stunt. Blow it off blowing something up, so to speak. What you will hear, however, sooner or later if you haven’t already, is something like, "we could have used that money for the schools."

Boston’s cartoonish - but deadly serious - response to the cartoon marketing plan the other day is a metaphor for our times. Or it underscores the question, at least, what are we going to do about our schools. And all our self-inflicted fear.

Self-inflicted? Well, the events of 9/11 were terrifying, all right, but more people than died on 9/11 die every month of infections contracted in US hospitals and I don't see many SWAT teams running around blowing up germs. We are afraid of "terrorists" mostly because we call them terrorists. Maybe we should call them bugs.

My heart, as usual in such matters, agrees with Eskow, writing at HuffPo yesterday: "The police in Boston wildly overreacted, tying up the town and throwing people into a panic because some viral marketers for a cartoon show left modified toys around town." My head, as usual in such matters, wonders if my heart might not be a little dim.

Because if baiting police comes to be a staple of viral marketing, we've got a problem there. This being America in the Age of Advertising, it won't be long before we have suicide bombers, like NASCAR drivers, wearing corporate sponsorships on their sleeves. Which would surely not be good.

But if we don't lighten up a little we will be terrified all our days.

And the windows will fall out of the schools.