Jack-O's at it again

No, I'm not talking about Michael Jackson, although I can't deny that he is indeed at it again. I'm talking about Jack Thompson, the intolerant, closed-minded, homophobic, video game hating, Howard Stern fighting attorney from Florida. Now the very state that issued him his legal license is taking him to court for his antics in the court room.

This is the same guy who took Rockstar Games, the creators of Grand Theft Auto and Bully, to court for making violent games available to minors. He claimed violent video games trained kids to kill and desensitized them to brutality. He also tried to get defendants in murder trials to blame their violent crimes on video games like Grand Theft Auto.

Now, some people might not see a problem with this. Fair enough, kids probably shouldn't be playing these games. They are violent and inappropriate for kids. However, these games don't cause people to become murderers, and they certainly don't train kids to kill.

As a person who played Grand Theft Auto III at the young age of 13, I can honestly say that it made me no more prone to violence than when my bricks reached the top in Tetris. I can also say with absolute certainty that it didn't train me to kill. Anyone who has played a game like this knows that shooting a gun in a video game is nothing like shooting a gun in reality. As someone who has done both, I can say that I still had the same level of accuracy with a firearm before and after touching any shooting games.

As for his accusations that violent games desensitize kids to violence, I have played the most brutal games out there. From Grand Theft Auto III, to Condemned, to Resident Evil, I've bashed in more brains and shot off more heads than I can count, and I still can't even bring myself to step on a bug any larger than a centimeter.

Now that I've said my bit about how wrong Jack Thompson is about video games (and pretty much everything else), let's talk about his unacceptable methods in his cases. In 1992, Jack Thompson tried to get the Florida Bar, which he is a member of, deemed unconstitutional. He said this was because they were attacking him personally because of their "pro-gay, humanist, liberal agenda." In 2006, he tried to get Bully, a Rockstar game based in the schoolyard, banned from being released. Rockstar sent a representative to show the game to Thompson and the judge, and afterword the judge dismissed the case. Thompson then criticized the judge for not knowing what he was watching, and accusing Rockstar of avoiding the most violent parts of the game.

Following his failed attempt to ban the game because of its violence, he tried to work from a different angle. As the truly closed-minded man he is, he attacked the gay community when he "discovered" that in Bully, it is possible for the main character, a 15 year old boy, to kiss another boy. Thompson wrote a letter to the ESRB saying he had "found gay sexual content in Bully as Jimmy Hopkins makes out with another male student. Good luck with your 'Teen' rating now." The ESRB responded by telling him that they already knew about the content, and that it wasn't any reason to raise the rating to Mature.

How is it possible for someone with so little respect for justice could be one of the people appointed to uphold it. We can only hope that in the coming months, Thompson will do something so unforgiveable that he will have his legal license fully revoked...or be thrown in jail... or killed. Either way, we need to get this psycho out of the courts.

Why do you hate, Jack? Did Mommy not love you?