City of Boston Declared No Humor Zone

Following the arrest of a 19-year old MIT student for wearing clothing that authorities at Boston's Logan Airport believed was a “hoax bomb,” Boston Mayor Tom Menino has declared the entire city a “No Humor Zone.”

Boston was paralyzed last January after police, who discovered blinking electronic signs showing a cartoon character giving people the finger just three short weeks after the signs had been put up, decided that the cartoons might be part of a terror attack.

"Al-Queda is constantly changing their tactics," a police official explained at the time. "The very fact that they have never used blinking electronic cartoons would have been proof that they did it if they actually had done it. Thus we were right to react as we did."

In a press conference following the Logan arrest Menino explained that insensitivity to humor, whimsy, or irony was just one element of the city's approach to terror threats. “We know that terrorists have no sense of humor at all" Menino said, "so we’ve made sure that the people who assess terror threats are likewise incapable of laughing at anything, no matter how funny others might find it. We believe that this may help us see through tactics that other police forces might overlook. When New York is destroyed by exploding Whoopee Cushions, we'll see who has the last laugh."

In order to reduce the number of false alarms, and to make the city's policy clear enough that even MIT students can understand it, the Mayor has directed his Task Force for Stupid Signs to create a “No Humor Zone” sign, shown above. The mayor has ordered fifteen thousand to be posted throughout the city.

“People need to realize that in Boston, humor is not a laughing matter,” said a spokesperson for the Mayor's office.