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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 ?
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Jack Thompson is on Take 2's payroll. He's the best advertising they could possibly ask for.
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.
Please stop submitting Jack Thompson stories. He's got nothing if you ignore him. Leave it to Shacknews, keep it off Slashdot.
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.
[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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.