Day: October 18, 2005

Jack Thompson — Sometimes He Feels Like A Nut

Jack’s back (Thompson that is) and this time its the nutcase vs. the video game freaks at Penny-Arcade.

This time around, Thompson made a bizarre offer to pay $10,000 to any game developer who would put out a crude game in which a relative of a victim of video game-inspired violence takes his revenge on game developers. Presumably Thompson was being satirical, though who knows what goes on in this nutcase’s head, and his point was that video game developers wouldn’t create a game where they were the objects of violence. Of course, within short order there were numerous mod projects to fulfill Thompson’s proposal to a T. Thompson responded by saying he was just being satirical and took this $10,000 and went home.

Alas, that was not to be the end of the story. The enterprising folks at Penny-Arcade felt if Thompson wouldn’t keep his word, they would — having been satisfied that Thompson’s challenge had been met, they donated $10,000 in Jack Thompson’s name to The Entertainment Software Association.

That prompted Thompson to fax a letter to Seattle police demanding that they arrest the Penny Arcade folks for harassing and attempting to extort him. Thompson is not just against video game violence, he’s apparently against any speech he disagrees with.

The weird thing is that Thompson still appears on respectable television programs despite a) not knowing what he’s talking about, and b) being an obvious nutcase.

On the first point, Thompson’s Monday night appearance on CNN is an example of his ignorance of the very video game market he wants to destroy. He appeared on Anderson Cooper’s show to talk about the well-reviewed but controversial “Blitz: The League” — the latest installment of what used to be NFL Blitz. According to Penny-Arcade, Thompson offered this judgment of the latest Blitz game,

The NFL wouldn’t allow it’s name to be used, so that tells you something.

This is a demonstrably ignorant statement for someone who passes himself off as an expert on video games. The National Football League recently reached an exclusive agreement with Electronic Arts making EA the only company that can make games with the NFL brand. Midway is not part of EA, so it simply cannot make NFL branded games regardless of how banal or controversial they are. Even if they had loved the game (very doubtful), the NFL could have allowed their name to be associated with the latest Blitz.

More importantly, the ultra violence and some of the more controversial elements of Blitz are clearly veiled shots at the NFL. One feature of Blitz, for example, allows players to juice up their players with any number of steroids to help them perform better or recover more quickly from injury (the player also has to deal with random drug tests and other repercussions for players using steroids).

As for whether or not Thompson is a nutcase, as I’ve maintained, your mileage may vary, but he proved it to my mind in 1988 when running against Janet Reno for the position of Florida Attorney General. Thompson’s campaign premise was quite simple — Reno was a closet lesbian, so she could not be trusted to be attorney general.

At a campaign debate, Thompson actually handed Reno a piece of paper with three checkboxes that read, “I, Janet Reno, am a homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual. If you do not respond then you will be deemed to have checked one of the first two boxes.” Reno wadded up the piece of paper and ignored Thompson, but he kept hitting away at his theme that Reno was a closeted lesbian and was susceptible to being blackmailed if she was elected.

Nut. Case. And CNN guest expert to talk about video games. Go figure.

Cindy Sheehan, We’ll Miss You

The Tri-Valley Herald laments the passing of Cindy Sheehan from the public stage — i.e., her 15 minutes is definitely over. The Herald notes,

But after drawing the international spotlight in Camp Casey in Crawford, her name is fading from headlines.

. . .

She attracted what in essence became a traveling troupe of anti-war activists and p.r. agents and usual suspects, and the story just ceased to be as appealing, [University of Virginia professor Larry] Sabato said. It didn’t seem quite as natural and original, it became more of the same.

Before Cindy Sheehan passes completely out of view, however, lets not forget what she stood for.

Remember fondly the time Sheehan summarized her views at an anti-war gathering at San Francisco State University,

America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for.

Besides which the United States was simply fighting a proxy war. As she said in a letter to Ted Koppel (whom she felt treated her unfairly and did not thank her profusely enough for her appearance on Nightline),

Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel.

If it weren’t for the U.S. support of Israel’s policies visa vis the Palestinians, Sheehan reminded us, there would not be any terrorism.

Or remember the time she told CBS News’ Mark Knoller that foreign terrorists entering Iraq were freedom fighters,

But now that we have decimated the country, the borders are open, freedom fighters from other countries are going in, and they [the U.S. government] have created more terrorism by going to an Islamic country, devastating the country and killing innocent people in that country.

And it was not just Iraq, Sheehan reminded us. The Iraq war was just a continuation, after all, of the imperialist war of aggression in Afghanistan,

[CHRIS] MATTHEWS: Can I ask you a tough question? A very tough question.

SHEEHAN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: All right. If your son had been killed in Afghanistan, would you have a different feeling?

SHEEHAN: I don’t think so, Chris, because I believe that Afghanistan is almost the same thing. We’re fighting terrorism. Or terrorists, we’re saying. But they’re not contained in a country. This is an ideology and not an enemy. And we know that Iraq, Iraq had no terrorism. They were no threat to the United States of America.

MATTHEWS: But Afghanistan was harboring, the Taliban was harboring al-Qaida which is the group that attacked us on 9/11.

SHEEHAN: Well then we should have gone after al-Qaida and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan.

MATTHEWS: But that’s where they were being harbored. That’s where they were headquartered. Shouldn’t we go after their headquarters? Doesn’t that make sense?

SHEEHAN: Well, but there were a lot of innocent people killed in that invasion, too. … But I’m seeing that we’re sending our ground troops in to invade countries where the entire country wasn’t the problem. Especially Iraq. Iraq was no problem. And why do we send in invading armies to march into Afghanistan when we’re looking for a select group of people in that country?

So I believe that our troops should be brought home out of both places where we’re obviously not having any success in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and that’s who they told us was responsible for 9/11.

And, of course, Sheehan was the first to note the evil hands of the neo-cons on American soil when the National Guard was sent in to New Orleans to maintain order following Hurricane Katrina. Sheehan urged the Bush administration to, “Pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq.”

Presumably if it had not been for U.S. support of Israel, Hurricane Katrina never would have had to hit Louisiana at all.

Its too bad Sheehan is so quickly leaving the public consciousness and that we will no longer be treated to such eloquent pearls of wisdom.

Sources:

Peace mom slips from public stage. Josh Richman, Tri-Valley Herald, October 18, 2005.

Cindy: Terrorists ‘freedom fighters’. Joe Kovacs, World Net Daily, August 23, 2005.