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Jack Thompson's Letter To Take-Two Exec's Mother
debatem1 writes "Apparently, anti-violent-video-games crusader Jack Thompson is at it again, this time writing a letter to the mother of Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of Take-Two, the company that produces the GTA series of video games. In it he compares Zelnick to a member of the Hitler Youth, advocates beating the young Zelnick, and contemplates the existence of a Ted Bundy merit badge for boy scouts."
He's like herpes. The symptoms go away, but it really never goes away.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
and see how they feel about their dads conduct
fairs fair right ?
Strauss Zelnick presses charges against Jack Thompson, claiming this was a threat. Mostly because it would entertain me.
Behave yourself or I'll tell your mom on you!
Hey, Jack. I'm fairly certain the Hitler Youth would not approve of violence against the authorities. In fact, they would more likely be on the side of authority, decrying any subversive activities that advocate violence against a police state.
If you had the power to go back in time and beat Strauss Zelnick in front of his mother, would you?
Shouldn't he have stopped trying to tattle on people to their mother a few decades ago? It's kind of funny when their little, but once you become a grown man it's kind of childish
Please stop submitting Jack Thompson stories. He's got nothing if you ignore him. Leave it to Shacknews, keep it off Slashdot.
No one really cares abount Jack Thompson anymore. No one that counts. The only reason Jack Thompson does what he does is because he likes to watch the stink that get's made at sites like Slashdot. The lesson here is to not allow Jack Thompson to get his glory here. This is done by IGNORING Jack Thompson.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I think for Bully 2 they need to have a hot coffee mode where a young Zelnick beats up on a young JT. That would be sweet justice.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I have to seriously wonder, is this man mentally ill? The only reason he receives any attention now was due to his previous work, but as the things he says and does keep getting stranger and stranger I have to wonder.
In the US, people are only forcibly evaluated for mental illness under the most obvious conditions. If you have a person who is slowly slipping off the edge no one will do anything until he becomes an obvious problem. Even then it is usually be ignored unless he harms someone.
It is quite possible that Jack Thompson is out of his mind. But no one will step in until after he has practically killed someone.
John the Baptist wasn't a crank who got disbarred for filing frivolous lawsuits. Thompson is delusional. He seems to think that video games, and nothing else, is responsible for all of the world's evils. And when scripture starts getting quoted, you know you're in for some nutjobbery. The Bible verses were just over the top. And going to the mom? What the hell, is he trying to say "Hey Zelnick, I know where your mom lives. Muhahhaa"
I'm sure there's going to be fallout from this. I eagerly await Zelnick's reply.
-R
He is seen as the de-facto "spokesperson" of the anti-videogame agenda. And he's dangerously insane, to the point that noone takes him seriously at all. The plus of having such a buffoon "in charge" of the anti-videogame agenda is that no sane person would dare speak up on his side, for fear of being associated with him.
All I can say to that is...lol. You need to turn the TV and computer off and go outside.
He's crossed over into the realm of stalking.
In GTA, you have free will. You can stay at home, go to work, maybe as a taxi driver?, drive to church on sundays, and never hurt anyone. That Jack Thompson becomes a criminal thug with disregard for the law and life, shows more about him than the game.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Dear Mrs. Bush:
Your son, as you may know (or maybe you don't know), is the President of the United States, whose most popular foreign policy adventures are killing hundreds of thousand of people. Though they are a different color, I do believe they are still people.
Your son last week was reported to have said the following about Iran: "A nuclear Iran must not be allowed."
Taking your son's thought, I would encourage you either to join the Marines, or encourage all of your grand-children to join up, especially Jenna and little Barbara.
What you will see in the next war, if this iteration of war is anything like its predecessors, is incredible interactive violence aimed at everyone (whom you can shoot in the head and see the blood spray), innocent bystanders (whom you can run over with your Humvee or tank just for the heck of it), and of course the plentiful indigenous female prostitutes you can have sex with and then filet with a knife or stomp with your feet in order to get your money back. Experts note that the recent plethora of killings is caused in whole by your darling son's Administration and philosophical flunkies. There are four thousand dead soldiers in Iraq, and perhaps almost a million dead civilians. No, really - it was on 60 Minutes. I hope Bush has provided you with a flat screen TV to see the grief of the bereaved families that fills the screen. I mean, if reporters were allowed to say such things.
The violence that your son trafficks in is the kind of stuff that most mothers would be ashamed to see their son putting into the hands of other mothers' children, but, hey, your son Bush has recently assured the world that he is "a Boy Scout, everybody knows that." I'd love to see the merit badges that Scout Troop handed out. Is there a Colonialism merit badge? If so, your loving son deserves one now.
There's hundreds of thousands of mothers you would do well to talk to. They have a grief they carry every day that only a mother can know. There are other such mothers in the heartland of Iran whose inhabitants your son simply sees as commercial targets.
Your son, this very moment, is doing everything he possibly can to sell the new Iran war, to "defend" a country in which your son claims you raised him to be "a Boy Scout." More like the Hitler Youth, I would say.
Happy Mother's day, Mrs. Bush, which this year is May 11, and who knows how soon until your son or his predecessor unleash actual death and violence upon other mothers' boys. I'm sure you're very proud.
As long as Jack Thompson exists, violent video games will have nothing to fear. We should only worry when he's gone.
Dear Mrs. Thompson,
I don't know if you've noticed it or not, but your son is a real asshole.
Also, I believe that he has an object roughly the size of baseball bat crammed up his ass, seeing as this is the only possible way that he could be this fucking annoying. I suggest that you get it removed as soon as possible (if not for his sake, than for for ours).
I would wish you a happy mothers day, but I think this a probably a time of mourning for you, as you must constantly be reminded of the terrible choice you made in not having an abortion.
Sincerely,
-Strauss Zelnick
Don't get me wrong - I regard Take Two as an excellent representation of Dante's Inferno, given the way they treated David Braben and others, and shock/gore games strike me as very childish, but amoral "moralists" (Mary Whitehouse was another) who use cultist techniques to "program" the more easily-swayed segments of the population to believe their propoganda are far far worse than those they seek to suppress. It seems to me that of the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse, Famine has retired in favour of FUD. There really are some fates worse than death, and perverted mind-control games would be one of them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
How is this news? He sends a rambling, pointless e-mail to Zelnick's lawyers, not his mother. He's not introducing anything new, it doesn't reveal anything about him we already didn't know, so why does this get on slashdot's front page?
Really, so what? Why are you publicising this guy?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Does anyone else think this should be tagged "godwinslaw"?
It's OK, this story is only like 3 weeks old, that's still fresh enough for the front page of /. right?
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
I'd like to see an open reply from Ms. Zelnick to JT. Preferably something that tells him what a moron he actually is for sending this to her in the first place, like she doesn't know what the hell is going on. If she's anything like most mothers I know, she knows damn good and well what her son's doing, and probably understands what Jack doesn't - it's a game. =p
"In caelum, illuc est libertas."
I'm not sure if it's funny or just sad to see this post modded informative and insightful.
Frankly this guy simply likes being paid attention to. He finds something that can be seen as controversial and then goes around telling anyone who will listen why its supposedly bad. Most likely this results in paid speaking engagements to those who can't form a simple opinion on their own. For what its worth I believe that the 'video games' don't make a person violent, that they are already that way and when they finally do something people like the above scurry off and try to find any link to their viewpoint just to verify their opinions. Someone should send a letter to Thompsons mother saying what a obvious crackpot he is, quoting physiological text to prove the assuption, and see if he appreciates it. Doubtful.
He sent a letter to the mother telling her that her son's game got perfect reviews. I stopped reading the article after that but I can only assume the remainder of the letter were Thompson's heartfelt congratulations and good wishes.
Sheesh, can't Jack Thompson do nice things every once in a while?
[sarcasm] Yup. I couldn't possibly figure out how to rob, murder or carjack someone if I hadn't played GTA1 back in the day -- and the knowledge that driving a car [any car, even a stolen one] through a spraypainting facility will magically get the cops off my trail for anything I've ever done sure is handy. [/sarcasm]
GTA isn't for kids, and I certainly think that cases where children are playing it are troubling (particularly for hours and hours on end, but that's true of any video game regardless of content), but the whole violent-videogames-cause-RL-violence meme is silly. It's much more defensible that individuals who are violent in nature are attracted to violent video games -- but I don't see how that's an argument for any kind of a ban, certainly not a strong enough argument to overcome the first-amendment counterpoint. Any rational individual knows that actions taken in real life have real consequences attached to them, and so evaluates such actions using a completely different metric than one might use in playing a game.
So -- I won't complain about the consequences of violent video games being available for sale to adults, because I honestly believe that there are no substantial negative consequences on the scale described. If my family is (against all probability to the contrary) murdered in a random act of violence, I'll do the rational thing and blame the person who pulled the trigger, rather than searching for scapegoats. That said, violent videogames have permeated our society to the point that any real effects on the level of random violence should already be highly visible -- and while there's a highly publicized shooting spree here or there, (1) there's no clear causal correlation, and (2) the death rate from those isn't even close to background noise in the grand scheme of things; it's far, far more likely that my family will die in a random traffic accident, and that's a risk we willingly accept every time we get in the car to watch a movie or go to the store.
Keep your fearmongering. If you want to live in a world where you're afraid of every kid who owns an Xbox, you're welcome to -- but me and mine prefer to go about living our lives (and facing much more real and present challenges), unworried by your imaginary and unrealized fears. I imagine those who were afraid of D&D or rock-and-roll felt similarly to you earlier in this century -- every generation finds some reason to worry needlessly about their youth -- but history proved those fears out as unfounded, and will do so again.
Yup -- isn't it great?
I really don't see what your point is. We know this is true, and we still have plenty of fun doing it.
Bluntly, that was the first thing that came to my mind. The question that McCarty was asked by Joseph Welch when he drove his communist witch hunt too far. Have you no shame?
There are certain limits you don't cross. There are certain things you don't do, no matter what your agenda may be. Writing the mother of one of the people you 'fight' against and likening her son to Baldur von Schirach is one of them.
If this proves anything, it's not that computer games, no matte what content, are bad, but that Jack Thompson is on a witch hunt. It has become obvious that his agenda isn't anymore to protect anyone. This isn't an attempt to end the sale of violent games. It is a direct attack on a person which isn't even in any way connected to the problem he allegedly has with those games. He claims he tries to protect people from psychologic damage these games allegedly do, but he himself caused psychologic damage to a person who doesn't even partake in the whole process of creating those games.
So far, I didn't care too much about Jack Thompson. So far, he was a nut that tried to stop games from being sold. So be it. Whether those games exist, I don't really care. Now he is causing emotional harm to people who don't even have a connection with the game industry, except through some relative. Should we start harrassing his kids about their father's witchhunt?
I wouldn't go down to that level. Punishment for the sins of your kin have been abolished in Germany since... well, given his choice of comparisons, Jack Thompson seems to know since when.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He doesn't talk to the adult person he wants to adress (who holds a responsible position in a big company) and instead tries to work it out behind his back talking to his mommy? Can one be any more disrespectful? Can one make himself look any more retarded? If he actually had a point his arguments should be able to last through a face-to-face discussion with those concerned. Instead he behaves like the fucking sunday school teacher he is and tries to abuse parental authority. Jeez, when does this idiot Thompson die? I'm just asking, he's pretty old already.
Does anyone find it odd that someone who against violence uses it by way of a letter? It has always been a conundrum to me that people protesting war, violence, nuclear weapons, etc... seem to resort to violence themselves. Maybe I think too much, but wouldn't they be more effective if they lived what they preached? Just a thought.............
Any lawyer who writes to a businessman's MOTHER over what is basically a political issue, deserves to be taken out and shot.
Brings up a good question. If you were to kill Jack Thompson, then blame it on things you saw in a video game, could you use Thompson's own prior court statements as grounds for dismissal, because the video game made you do it? I mean, it would be like having the dead lawyer rooting for his own killer!
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
I don't, that would make him a martyr, and basically prove his (invalid) point...
And what was the name of that violent video game Hitler used to play?
You stay classy, Jack Thompson!
the problem with us ignoring him is lots of other media outlets won't, thus giving no conflicting opinion.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I don't fault Jack Thompson for having an opinion, even though I disagree with it and I believe it is utter horseshit.
What I have a big problem with is the mentality shared by him and anyone else who thinks they know what's good for us: the unstated assumption that I am unable to decide for myself whether playing a video game is in my interests, and the unstated assumption that parents are incapable of deciding on their own whether their children are mature enough to handle the content of a video game. Basically, he's assuming that we are all mindless zombies with no choice but to imitate anything we see on a screen, and he's also trying to tell parents how they should raise their children, implying that they are unable to handle the job without his input. I assure you, no one who wants to do these things has a pure motive.
The whole thing is an insult. It illustrates yet again the attitude that "it's not good enough that I choose to abstain from something; everybody else must do the same as me." It also assumes that no one is capable of distinguishing a fictional video game from reality, which is ironically more likely if we stop expecting people to know the difference.
I am very thankful that my parents (within reason, of course) did not try to shelter me from every little objectionable thing in the world. Instead, they explained to me why something was right or wrong and equipped me to deal with an imperfect world that contains many things I might not like. If the Jack Thompsons of the world had their way, no one would be able to actually grow up into an adult human being who can deal with the world the way it is and perhaps try to make it a better place because every potential source of controversy would be censored. What he is advocating is really a form of cowardice, which is generally the motive behind those who would tell you how to live your life.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Mrs. Zelnick, did you train up your son, Strauss, to make millions of dollars by pushing Mature-rated video games to children?
Dead wrong, going to prison is the true training course in how to break the law. I got sent there and learned more about breaking and entering and bumpkeys and the manufacturing methods of methamphetamines and even more stuff than I'd have ever cared to know.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
FTFA:
"but, hey, your son Strauss has recently assured the world that he is "a Boy Scout, everybody knows that." I'd love to see the merit badges that Scout Troop handed out. Is there a Ted Bundy merit badge? If so, your loving son deserves one now. It should be red and green, for obvious reasons."
No where does Jack (ass) Thompson say the he "contemplates the existence of a Ted Bundy merit badge for boy scouts". As an Assistant Scout Master with the Boy Scouts this kind of FUD is just stupid! If anything Jack (ass) Thompson needs to be on the recieving end of a Ted Bundy Merit Badge anyway!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Who says that, exactly? In the UK all the GTA games have been rated 18. I gather that in the US, they've normally been rated 17 - which was why the Hot Coffee thing was so controversial over there, since a sex scene would have upgraded the game to an 18. Either way, it's not as if very many children are being sold these games. No sensible parent would buy little Timmy such a game, any more than they would sit them down in front of a DVD of 'Scarface'. Right?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Unless, say the carjacker had never played GTA IV or indeed any videogame, and neither had any of his associates.
Two words... downloadable content!
Make SELinux enforcing again!
I'm not so sure about that. Anyone who's played GTA IV online here want to comment on how many kids you've encountered?
I know there are many who play the Halo series, but that's not quite as bad.
Yes. That is because there is only one side.
This forum is out of control on this topic.I agree. Attention whores might go away if we stopped giving them attention.
And again, being less aware of the facts and thinking you were trying to save lives you might just email some "evil" CEO's mother yourself.No, I would not do that, because I am neither mentally ill nor a 5 year old.
If we sided with the man we would be applauding him, not questioning his mental health.Not really. If Linus Torvalds sent such a letter to Steve Ballmer's mother, we'd be all WTF? It would be funny, just like this story is funny, but it would still require mental instability on Torvalds's part.
On an unrelated note, ever wondered how rumors get started?
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
...when Godwin's law was invoked in the blurb?
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
If you read tfa you will see that the email was actually issued to Zelnick's lawyer. Now i agree Jack Thompson is a tool and should should be banished to the south pole. But timothy should word his postings here to reflect the article in wired and not make this so sensational. Besides this article is from the 24th of LAST month.
If there was a video game out there that told people to rob him and kill him do you think he would be upset?
prob would sue.
Yup, I have GTA 2,3,Vice City and I also have kids and guess what? To my kids Vice City is "the box with a car on it" That's all, because they never get to see it being played, or play it themselves.
Jack Thompson should try out this new technique called "parenting" it's worth promoting!
Two Parts Swash, One Part Buckle
Personally however I think Thompson is an annoying "end justifies the means" idiot who thinks behaving like a sociopath is OK so long as he gets his goals achieved or gets some attention for a political career.
There does seem to be a certain irony in writing to Mr Zelnick's mother to complain about his upbringing when Jack Thompson's main argument, as far as I can gather, is that violent media, including video games, are primarily responsible for violence in young people and society.
If that's the case, why does he expect that she had anything to do with it? Surely she's as much a victim of a free state as all the other parents whose children are running wild and uncontrolled.
It's apparently easier to care about the nonsensical goings on in a Video Game, than it is to arrest George Bush and his gang for defying the Geneva Conventions and actively telling others how to torture people. I can't get very excited about shooting even the most innocent cartoon character when this country's leaders live out GTA for real every day. Until Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice are behind bars, Jack Thompson can go f*ck himself.
what's the name and address of jack thompson's mother? i'm sure the /. community could draft a nice letter and we all send one
Speak for yourself buddy!
Writing a letter to someone's mother seems to be quite a bizarre action to me. The "Ted Bundy" and "Hitler Youth" analogies shows the man is on the insane side of the fence. If you disagree, please tell me what "CEO of violent video games company" and "Serial killer who enjoyed murdering women between ~15->25" have in common.
I humbly disagree. I have no interest in the GTA series (they just don't do it for me) and am interested in the discussion of the effect of violent media (including video games) on people, especially youth and impressionable minds. I believe though that investigating this properly is going to require experts in the field of mental health. Letters to CEO's mothers from frothing-at-the-mouth attorneys doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Thanks,
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
No. Thompson is a rare resource. Despite his borderline insanity, he still ends up on the news - people know his name. That fame, coupled with the hate he spews every now and again, should not be wasted. It should be harnessed.
Zelnick should take the letter and auction it off. He should then give the proceeds to Child's Play (or some equally ironic charity), in Thompson's name, of course. Because much as I'd like yet another quiet suit against Thompson, watching him fume helplessly as his attacks are turned against him - again - would be pure poetic justice, and that's just pure win.
"The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame."
Maybe you, Mrs. Zelnick, were so taken by your handsome son that you spared the rod and spoiled the child. That would explain why he has brought you, by the way he presently acts, "to shame." So to add to his other mountains of failings, he's also an advocate of child abuse. Odd from someone who is always thinking of the children.
IF we accepted that violent games push insane people over the edge more often than they give them a harmless outlet to funnel tendencies which might otherwise have turned to outright violence -- IF we accept that -- then I nonetheless maintain that it's better that three hundred million people have this aspect of their freedom of speech preserved and twenty of them get killed by a nutjob with a gun than if the three hundred million are told that they can't enjoy their choice of entertainment or can't create artistic works (and some video games do indeed make serious artistic or political statements -- BioShock in particular comes to mind among recent releases) and perhaps the nutjob happens not to be quite pushed over the edge; and yes, I'll voluntarily take my chances of being one of the twenty from that three hundred million. Given that the elements of society which would ban video games haven't been successful in convincing the rest of us to do so, I'm inclined to argue that popular belief is consistent with either (1) the risk being nonexistent, or (2) the risk being acceptable.
There certainly is such a thing as acceptable risk in return for entertainment -- remember that people are killed in car accidents going to the movies or out to buy toys or games or such, and nonetheless rational individuals choose to take such actions. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if more people are killed driving to and from movies in a year than by game-inspired gun violence. Would you ban movies or require that toys and games be purchased mail-order to reduce the instances of car accidents?
Also, the whole bloody-mayhem thing isn't exactly new. The most notorious example in the city I currently live in is that of Charles Whitman, dating back to the late 60s. I'd argue that mass media loudly publicizing such events has more to do with any recent surge (the existence of which I'm not presently ceding) than any other factor -- who doesn't want to be a household name?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Better yet, they play video games, but it's only Madden06 and the like.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I really don't see the basic concept as 'bizarre'. There's certainly some cognitive dissonance there, but if it counts as mental illness, then the society has about 50 million people who should be forcibly institutionalized, and no, I'm not being hyperbolic.
Yes, there's something internally contradictory about trying to hold certain people who have been adults for quite a few years responsible in court, and simultaneously thinking that also supports bitching to their mommies on them like the parents were still responsible. No, that's not enough to signal mental illness.
Now some of the details, such as the esoteric reference to red and green for merit badge colors, that's genuinely odd, non-linear thinking.
Who is John Cabal?
He'd get Score: 5 Insightful on his letter?
Old news.
Someone needs to find his mother's address and send her a letter advocating the beating of Jack Thompson. I swear if someone did that to me as a grown man with my own separate life from my parents I would be very pissed off and would probably try to sue for harassment. This is borderline stalking.
The rod referred to is a measuring rod, as was used to define measuring units for buildings and such. It is saying that if you do not measure what your children are doing and set boundaries for them, but let them do whatever they want to, they'll go off the rails.
then we can go back in time and prevent Jack's mother from ever conceiving the useless piece of meat.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Those are both from the Torah, a piece of Jewish literature which Strauss Zelnick (if he's really a member of the Hitlerjugend) would oppose.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
C'mon /. ... what's the problem with putting up stories when they hit and they're actually relevant anymore...
Individually they are games worth defending (even in small combinations)....
But if you put them all together and make a massive Jew killing, children molesting, woman raping, tax evading, cop killing, Jesus crucifying, car-jacking, non-handicap person parking in a handicap spot, all this being done while drinking booze, getting high, and pimping out one's own sister....
That my friend is too far.
It's brilliant. The lawyer in GTA IV is modeled on Jack Thompson. In the game, the protagonist kills the Jack Thompson surrogate and receives an award.
Either Jack Thompson is correct and GTA IV teaches the players to model their behavior on the game...in which case, Jack is going to be shot by GTA IV players. Or Jack is wrong and gets to live.
Be right and you die, be wrong and you live. What's it gonna be Jack?
... a perfect comparison.
Since Zelnick and his mom are both Jewish, comparing him to the Hitler Youth is pretty offensive. I hope they can bring him up on hate crimes charges.
In the 80's, Dungeons & Dragons was Evil (with a capital E), causing young malleable minds to turn to Satanism and murder.
In the 90's, Pokemon was Evil, and by proxy all other collectible card games. Pika-pi.
Now it's the 00's, and it's time for something new. Video games are just the latest target of all these Christian nutjobs trying to blame all the world's problems on something (anything) other than themselves.
When are buffoons like Thompson (and there's a whole lot of them, he's just this decade's most visible spokesperson) going to realize that the onus for ensuring our children are raised with healthy minds and morals belongs to no one but we parents.
Where were the parents of these kids who go out and shoot up their high school and then kill themselves after a couple hours training to master marksman levels on dust2?
I hacked up wicked bandits and took their gold in D&D, I jumped on mushrooms and turtle-things in Super Mario Brothers, blew up demons with a really big gun in Doom, shot rockets at cyborgs in Quake 2, blasted them damn terrorists in Counter-Strike, and killed a whole lot of people in the various Grand Theft Auto games. In a no-consequences environment where no one is hurt, it's fun. In the real world, life and liberty are sacred and I would never (except under extreme circumstances) harm another person.
As a gamer, this man offends me. As a human being, he disgusts me.
The last thing we need is this nut to be a martyr.
The irony with Jack is that not a single gamer has gone out and shot the guy yet. I mean, really, if gaming is training us to be murderers and aggressively attack things we dislike, why hasn't this guy gone down in a hail of gunfire (about 11 times by now)?
The bit of irony about this letter in particular is his quotes from a violent, hate filled book - the Bible. I know that is not the purpose of the Bible (in fact, I'd say the opposite is true), but my point is narrow minded people see things in a narrow minded way. If I focus entirely on who smote who and the violent battles and God turning sinners to salt and flooding the world killing everyone and everything (keeping two of everything is killing a lot of innocent animals), I miss the message of the book as a whole. I've heard many Christians describe the Koran (a book I doubt many of them have read) in exactly the same way, and again, it is a very violent book with a good message.
Since Jack is quoting Bible verses and I've read the GTA4 is about revenge, how about one of our own? Does the Bible not teach (in Exodus) life for life (eye for eye, tooth for tooth, etc)? I'll ignore the fact that Jesus contradicts that in the sermon on the mount (somewhere in Matthew) because it doesn't suit my cause.
Strauss Zelnick now has cause to file criminal charges against Jack Thompson for stalking. Sending creepy letters to your target's relatives would be considered stalking by any judge.
He could even get a restraining order banning Jack Thompson from communicating with him, his family, or his company in any way, shape, or form.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Oh God, someone please give me his email!! You know, I caught this letter and read it prior to seeing the article on SD and I have to say, I really thought it was a hoax, maybe some masked wannabe "anti-violent-video-games-hater". But oh no?! I was really, really wrong. How can constant insult after insult really bring down the empire of best sellers? Maybe he should play "Bully", it might offset his psychopathic mood a tad bit...
If the press would stop reporting on his antics, he would no longer have a mouthpiece for his ridiculous ranting. The man is clearly imbalanced.
"No sensible parent would buy little Timmy such a game, any more than they would sit them down in front of a DVD of 'Scarface'. Right?"
When I was purchasing my copy, there were two mothers in line with their little Timmys, buying the game for them. Each of those kids couldn't have been older than 10. One even went so far as to insult the clerk at the store when he suggested the game might not be suitable for her 10 year old.
When I went to go see "Hostel" at the theater, there were at least 10-15 kids under 10 there, with their parents.
Bullshit. IMO, Jack Thompson is just like those anti-abortionist zealots who harass and threaten health-care workers and innocent women seeking to have a legal medical procedure performed all because the assholes are "trying to save lives". And he's just one step away from the worst of that bunch who blow up the clinics and murder doctors; all for the purpose of "trying to save lives" and the glory of god.
Your attempted argument against the GP instead argues in favor of it. I assure you that people who come down on the other side of the abortion debate do indeed see the things that these "zealots" do as saving lives. If you really believe that life begins at conception, then it is not hard to rationalize killing one person in order to save literally hundreds that that person may kill over the course of his lifetime. Of course, most people who would have gone to that doctor will now go to another doctor, so lives may not actually be saved, at least not for long.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I fall into this category... I even played the original Grand Theft Auto with an overhead view, and I regularly still enjoy playing Carmageddon II.
Now, mind you, sometimes I get the impulse to do something violent to someone, but then I load up a violent video game and get it out of my system in a safe manner and I'm good to go.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They call it Citizenship in the World.
Truely. A lot of parents give their kid $49 and let them go out and buy the entertainment of their choice. In most cases, sales clerks making $7/hr plus commission have no problems selling little Timmy R rated merchandise, be it a PS2 game or a DVD set. Kids know enough not to go to the stores that WILL refuse them -- or they get their frinds' older brother to pick it up for them. The first the parents know about it is when they come home from work early some day and see what Timmy's really up to after school. Of course, even then many parents wouldn't care as it's "just a game".
Note that this is a country-based stereotype and by no means reflects the purchasing habits of any individual such as Jack Thompson or his children.
Yes. Instead, he listened to Wagner, was a vegetarian, a non-smoker, and a teetotaler. You could say that mass murder and warmongering were his only real vices. Jack should really be going after the tea cartels I guess, since it is obvious that drinking tea results in despotic activity.
Wagner was a bastard too. Which is why I find it funny so many people play his music at their weddings.
Intended only as a figure of speech, of course! :0)