When I Say "Hello Mr. Thompson" and Step On Your Foot, You Smile and Nod

There's a lawyer from Miami named Jack Thompson. He's been outspoken about wanting to censor things for years. He's one of these guys who has realized that you can get in the media by blasting the media for poisoning the minds of our youth. You may remember him as one of those assholes who wanted to ban Ice-T from everything because he did that song "Cop Killa" back in the early 90's.

Have you heard "Cop Killa," or in fact, any work by Ice-T's rock side project Body Count? In 2005, it sounds quaint, like a nursury rhyme. Ice-T has, since this time, changed his image from street tough to cartoon pimp, anyway.

But according to his own website, cleverly entitled StopKill, Thompson is proud of his work in trying to keep kids from finding out about Trespass star Ice-T.

In 1992, the American Civil Liberties Union named Jack Thompson one of its ten "Censors of the Year" for daring to suggest that Time Warner rapper Ice-T's "Cop Killer" should be pulled from store shelves worldwide. That award is a badge of honor Thompson wears proudly, not only because Time Warner did what he requested but because Thompson was ten years ahead of the national curve in predicting the entertainment-inspired copycat violence we are seeing from a generation raised on violence that Hollywood says is "cool."

Jack thinks he's radical and forward-thinking for suggesting that we should censor art for the public. You know, J.T., a few people had actually thought of this concept a few years before you, only they didn't have CD's and video games to protest about, so they burned books instead. Jackass.

Anyway, Jack's in the news again for doing something pointless and stupid. He has offered $10,000 up for charity if any game designer makes and distributes a game according to his own specifications. And what kind of game does Jack want them to design? Why a violent video game protesting...violent video games. Sound confusing? It is. It's also psychotic.

I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

Before we get to the actual proposal, some background. Take-Two Interactive is the parent company of Rockstar Games, the designers responsible for the "Grand Theft Auto" games. Now, yes, I agree that the content of "Grand Theft Auto" games are difficult to defend. It's a game in which you are permitted, nay encouraged, to murder policeman, kill innocent pedestrians with chainsaws and essentially lay waste to an entire American city.

Though I don't think playing "Grand Theft Auto" neccessarily causes or encourages violent behavior, I can appreciate why someone, particularly a parent, may be offended by its content.

Okay, having said all that, I don't think Paul Eibeler is someone who is "screwing up America." He operates an entertainment company that produces a questionable product. That's it. In fact, all 100 of my Top 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America list would be people who worked for massive corporations or the current political administration.

Anyway, here's Thompson's actual video game proposal:

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.

Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.

O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.

Okay, already this would make a bad video game. All that opening exposition, and nothing's even interactive yet! Has this guy even played a video game? And is the naming of the character O.K. meant to imply that the violence in the game is "OK"? If so, HA HA! Good one, Jackie!

O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.

A few comments:

(1) Jack Thompson has a bizarre obsession with Paul Eibeler about which I am seriously concerned...He has now openly fantasized in public about committing violence against this man and his family, oddly substituting a woman in Paul's place for no apparent reason. Also, Postal 2 is not a product of Rockstar Games or Take-That Entertainment. It's made by an independent company called Running With Scissors.

(2) Jack Thompson doesn't know how to compose satire. Is he arguing that this video game will appeal to violent game makers because it is so violent? If so, why offer a reward for its production? Or is he arguing that this game, by making them the targets, will point out to game makers the fallacy of their thinking? Again, this is nonsensical, because as regular working people, game designers are already essentially "targets" in games like "Grand Theft Auto," where any random civilian can be subjected to cruelty and bloodshed. Jack doesn't get that, when writing something satirical, you take up an opinion you disagree with in order to point out its inherent flaws. He's taking an argument he strongly believes in (that video games are too violent) and rendering it in its most aggressive, disgusting and repellant form for shock value. It doesn't work.

(3) Just for imagining this scenario and writing about it in public, Thompson reveals himself as a sick and disturbed individual.

O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.

I'm starting to think that Thompson has never actually played a video game. Games like "Grand Theft Auto" are interactive, firstly, so the player could decide whether or not he or she wanted to go kill everyone at Blank, Stare based on whether it would help them achieve their objective. Secondly, video games don't feature old songs on the soundtrack to heighten the emotion of a sequence as movies do. When contemporary songs are used, it's typically just as background noise, and it's only a segment of a song that doesn't neccessarily correspond thematically to the on-screen action. And what video game would include a 1980 Jackson Brown song, you fucking nerd?

Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. "You should have checked kids' IDs!"

Again, I don't get Thompson's use of satire. Is he saying that clerks at Best Buy deserve to be bludgeoned to death for selling children video games? Or is he just saying violent video game makers would want to bludgeon the clerks? The problem is that the "hero" of Thompson's violent video game is himself, running around doing all the horrible things he really wants to do to those who make and distribute games.

The guy's crazy and possibly violent himself. He's clearly hung up on these games for personal and not professional reasons.

How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.

Jack Thompson is a dangerous lunatic. Seriously. This is scary stuff. "Target others"? What others? Who is targeted by "Grand Theft Auto"? Cops? I'm sorry to break it to you, Jack, but for criminals, cops are already targets. I've played a lot of GTA 3 and Vice City and, near as I can tell, everyone who is not the protagonist is a target. You know...like life...

(Also, do I detect a hint of racism? Notice how the protagonist of Jack's violent game, for no good reason, has a Japanese name...Is he trying to slyly blame dirty foreigners for the violent fantasies included in video games?)