Jack Thompson is a modern day witch hunter. Instead of going after heretics, though, he goes after video games. In fact, he's currently suing Rockstar and Take Two for their "involvement" (and I use that term lightly) in the deaths of two police officers. His argument? Violent video games made a kid into a cop killer. Thompson recently made it onto the ACLUs list of the top ten censors in America.
This maniac was also recently interviewed by CBS. Reading his interview made me phsyically ill, but it also reminded me of a few things.
We are the party of personal responsibility. This is the sort of thing we mean when we say the Republicans are not.
Here is Jack Thompson's interview.
Here is Cathode Tan's response to the interview.
Cathode Tan makes a lot of good points, and I'm going to apply them to the conservative mindset in general. Thompson, as is often the case with moral crusaders, oversimplifies his point to the such a degree that he serves nobody but himself but being so loud. Thompson blames the entirety of the problem of youth violence on video games when in fact, no link has ever been found.
This isn't a problem just for gamers. The desire to fixate on a single problem and then eradicate it is pandemic to the conservative perspective, it often seems to me. Economy bad? Taxes are too high. Loosing international respect? Kick someone's ass. Crime up? Stronger sentences. Fire and Brimestone not getting the respect it used to? Damn homos.
Not only does oversimplifying the problem force focus onto a non-issue, it steals focus from issues that could actually solve the problem. If one were actually interested in making a dent in youth violence, then one would support gun control, increased education funding, after school programs, and the like. The only reason to go after video games is to make yourself feel morally superior.
On a very seperate disadvantage, focusing on video games in this way is the very definition of censorship. In the name of "protecting the children", Thompson is attempting to create a stigma which would stain even responsible adults who turn on their playstation after work.
Whether or not a company producing games is protected speech, my desire to play them certainly is. Back up off me, Mr. Thompson. I'm an adult and I can do what I like. If you don't want your kids playing violent video games, then check for the big yellow "M" on the side of the box before you let them play it. Speaking personally, all my games have that "M" painted on them, and that's my choice and my right.
To CBS' credit, they've also done an interview with Tim Buckley of Ctrl+Alt+Del fame. As one might expect, Mr. Buckley is rather more reasonable about the subject.
When asked about whether video games cause violent crime, he gets to the heart of the matter here:
in any violent instance that does arise, if there is even a video game system in the ROOM, the media will jump to point out that the violence must be somehow related. Or the parents will, out of reluctance to admit that perhaps it was a lack of attention or shoddy supervision that lead to a tragedy.
Video games are a form of escapism, but so is blaming video games.
Mr. Buckley ended his interview thusly:
to deny everyone, all of us who do know the difference between video games and reality, when parents could simply moderate their child's video games on a case-by-case basis as they saw fit, is completely ridiculous.
Indeed.