Newsradio Concordance

Unabomber (Theodore Kaczynski) – Though active since the late 1970s, the anonymous terrorist dubbed by “Unabomber” garnered the most media attention in the 90s when his mail bomb attacks become more frequent, sophisticated, and deadly. He received the name from the FBI file that labeled his cased UNABOM (short for “University and Airline Bomber”). In 1995, after the Unabomber mailed in several letters to newspapers in the hopes that his manifesto would be known and read, The New York Times and The Washington Post agreed to publish some of them. Part of their motivation was in the interest of public safety and the possibility that a reader might recognize the style of writing and finger the culprit. It worked as only weeks later David Kaczynski felt compelled to alert the FBI to his reclusive brother Ted as a possible suspect. Theodore Kaczynski was arrested on April 3rd, 1996.

Kaczynski’s attacks were motivated by his belief that society was becoming too reliant on emerging technologies and that people’s behavior and desires were based on artificial social-constructs. He felt that the humanity would eventually evolve into a race without any sense of personal freedom. While Kaczynski’s practices are while untenable, some have regarded his thesis as well-reasoned and formulated, a clear sign of his Harvard background and early years as a respected academic.

When all of the Unabomber references were made on Newsradio, the terrorist’s true identity was unknown. Therefore, several of Joe Gorelli’s colleagues playfully accuse him of being the Unabomber from time to time. For example, when preparing for an electrician’s test, Joe says that “Mindless drones don’t deserve to be using technology” which prompts Lisa’s to ask “You are the Unabomber, aren’t you?” It is somewhat ironic that Joe would be called the Unabomber since he makes his living through his technological savvy, but Joe often resorts to more unconventional, sometimes primitive means of solving problems. Dave even calls him a “Neo-Luddite” because Joe refuses to buy mass-produced parts from a hardware store (Episode 19,“Bitch Sesson”). The combination of his paranoia and distrust of standard technology made Joe a reasonable suspect in the Unabomber case. ["Bitch Session", "Coda", "Led Zeppelin II", "Negotiation", "Physical Graffiti"]