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Shapermc
Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 6279
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 Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 8:05 am Post subject: Jack Thompson's open letter to overthrow the ESA President |
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Well, normally I can just write this guy off to being a freak, but this went too far. You can read it here.
So I wrote him a letter in which I got a stupid canned response:
| My letter to Mr. Thompson wrote: | Dear Mr. Jack Thompson;
Having included your physical and email address I find myself inclined to respond to your open letter even though it was not addressed to me.
"The evening in January 2000 that I appeared on NBC Nightly News to talk about the link between violent games and Columbine, Tom Brokaw asked then Governor Bush about that link and what he as President would do about it? George Bush simply said "Parents just have to be better parents." He should trying telling that to my clients in Paducah whose three daughters were gunned down by 14-year-old video gamer Michael Carneal, who trained on Doom to become a more efficient killer. What did they, as parents, Mr. President, do wrong? Was sending their kids to school their mistake?"
Mr Thompson it seems that perhaps you were more right in your joking than your serious nature. Perhaps sending the boy to school, or better, keeping him in school, was the main problem:
"Heath High School's principal said the boy's school essays and short stories revealed that he felt weak and picked on."(1)
Not only was it assumed that he was a picked on and disturbed individual initially, but even 5 years later the pieces come together showing that your assumption of his entertainment leading him to violence is wrong:
"But as the facts emerged, it became clear that much of the speculation — about violent movies, bad parents, devil-worshiping friends — did not apply.
Unbeknownst to his family, Michael had spent the year before the shootings battling obsessive fears.
He kept kitchen knives and a sickle under his bed to protect himself from imaginary intruders. He sometimes walked on furniture to avoid the floor, where he thought people with chainsaws were waiting to cut off his feet.
Given his peculiar torment, any teasing by classmates was going to be too much. In his eighth-grade year, the school newspaper printed gossip that Michael and another boy "had feelings for each other."
One student began calling him "faggot" or "gay" at least four times a day, Michael told doctors.
Up until seconds before he pulled the trigger, he wasn't sure he would do it, he said. Then he dropped one of the earplugs he had brought for the occasion and imagined students mocking him. "Stupid kid," they said in his mind. "Can't even get earplugs right.
He started shooting."(2)
How you can blame his behavior and actions on games is disgusting to the families of those who he hurt, and even the media that you are trying to deface.
"The inept fashion in which ESA has 'managed' the 'Hot Coffee' mod scandal swirling around your industry and Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has given Senator Rodham Clinton a reason and a mandate to act."
You seem all up in arms about this sex simulation in GTA:SA yet completely ignore something that came before it and require no knowledge of hacking computer programs to access: God of War. At the beginning of the second level of God of War you earn skill points for completing a mini-game involving sex with two women. This seems to avoid your mention or outrage for reasons that I can only imagine revolve around you wanting to see your name on news sites riding the coat tails of the "public outrage" towards Grand Theft Auto.
"When well-intended citizens and legislators have tried to get your industry to adhere to the logic of the "M for mature" ratings label, Lowenstein has flown into a fury, claiming children have a constitutional right to consume pornography and violence."
Please help me out here and give us direct quotes. You seem to have a powerful mastery of twisting other people's words and a great fear of the first amendment that this country was built upon. Claims such as: "Events, like Columbine to the factor of ten, will take care of that" is quite the presumption and threat to the public. If you want to fill "the void of real leadership" you should take it upon yourself to not create a panic for a circumstance where there is no need for one. You're shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre here.
"[…]If you want to be a partner with America's parents by together taking our children out of harm's way , then look for an ESA president who has the common decency to recognize the truth, speak it, and then act upon it."
Your crusade is just flat out wrong to be going after this man. You need to be going after the establishments allowing the sale of these "harmful" games, not the release of them. Again hiding from the first amendment of our constitution you try to cut the poison from the root. The warnings are all in place yet people are ignoring them. So instead of aiming for the ignorant masses who choose not to get involved in what their children are doing you try to prevent it from being sold, throwing away our country's history in the process.
In general your stance on video games disgusts me. You ignore the multitude of non-violent games that are available and often of higher quality than the more violent ones. You force this perception of games that harms them from being recognized as art and the further exploration of such. To myself, and many others, it seems as though you just enjoy seeing the media get up in arms and paste your name all over the place. Your opinions are being viewed by people unwilling to research on their own as fact, and this is a horrible state of affairs for video games. All you are doing is hurting things, not helping.
I recommend that you read Kieron Gillen's article "Culture Wargames" in the first issue of Escapist Magazine ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/1/7). Perhaps you will realize that things are not the lie that you persistently feed to the media. There are people attempting to inform the public about the art, feeling, and intelligence of video games and we get completely overshadowed by you.
-Regards
Matthew Williamson
Editor-In-Chief
The Gamer's Quarter
http://www.gamersquarter.com
1: CNN, December 3rd 1997
2: Cincinnati Gutierrez, September 14th 2002 |
| Thompson's Canned Reply wrote: | John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
jackpeace@comcast.net
July 14, 2005
The Honorable Amy Klobuchar
Hennepin County Attorney
C-2000 Government Center
Minneapolis, Minnesota Via Fax to 612-348-9712
The Honorable Mike Hatch
Attorney General of the State of Minnesota
St. Paul, Minnesota Via Fax to 651-282-2155
Re: Probable Criminal Sale of Sexual Material Harmful to Minors by Best Buy and Target in Hennepin County in Violation of Minnesota Statute 617.291, et sequitur
Dear Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Hatch:
Recently I had the distinct pleasure of meeting personally with two fine lawyers in the Hennepin County Attorney’s office regarding the distribution of violent, mature-rated video games to minors. I appreciate that opportunity.
My wife, who is also a lawyer, is from the Twin Cities area and a graduate of St. Olaf College. I have spent many wonderful days in your community over the past thirty years. Unfortunately, I was sitting in the old Bloomington stadium with my future father-in-law when Drew Pearson committed offensive interference to catch Roger Staubach’s “Hail Mary” pass in the 1975 NFC title game.
I write to inform you of a flagrant breach of the rules far more consequential. It involves the knowing theft of the innocence of hundreds of thousands of children in the Twin Cities and around the country by two Hennepin County, Minnesota corporations—Target and Best Buy.
I spent time this week working with U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s office which effort culminated in her nationally-reported news conference today from our nation’s capital. Senator Clinton decried the ongoing distribution across the nation of a violent video game entitled Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which sales are resulting in the viewing of sexually explicit material by minors.
Given the facts, which are too numerous to relate here, it would appear that there is probable cause that Best Buy and Target are at their highest corporate levels involved in the criminal distribution and/or conspiracy to distribute sexual material harmful to minors in violation of Minnesota Statute 617.291 et sequitur.
As you both know, your respective offices have certain injunctive remedies available to you under that statute, in addition to straightforward criminal prosecutions of the companies and their corporate officers.
I encourage you both to proceed on this urgent matter immediately. I and others can provide sworn testimony to any grand jury before whom you might choose to bring this disturbing matter.
Finally, I have urged both Best Buy’s and Target’s CEO’s, Mr. Anderson and Mr. Ulrich, to stop this activity, and they refuse. Please enjoin them or indict them or do both.
Regards, Jack Thompson |
So I leave the question... do I email him back asking if he read my comments and concers or not? |
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Mister Toups
Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005
Posts: 1693
Location: Lafayette, LA
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 8:12 am Post subject: |
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You're wasting your breath.
Someone needs to make a mod to half life 2 where you run around killing Jack Thompson.
_________________
where were you when nana komatsu got a wii? |
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Joined: 07 Dec 2004
Posts: 3725
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 8:45 am Post subject: |
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| Mister Toups wrote: | You're wasting your breath.
Someone needs to make a mod to half life 2 where you run around killing Jack Thompson. |
How about a Doom mod instead? Or a GTA Mod where you play the "hot coffee" sex mini game with him.
-Wes
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ee_emm_ecks
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Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Posts: 98
Location: St. Louis
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 9:33 am Post subject: |
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| Hah. I get the feeling the GTA community will be all over that. All they need to do is make a Jack Thompson model. |
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disneyland
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Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 131
Location: Shinsei
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| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 12:07 am Post subject: |
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I enjoyed this little quip from the UK gamebiz site.
| Quote: | The mod is currently being investigated by both the ESRB in North America and the OFLC in Australia, with a view to deciding whether the rating originally granted to the game needs to be upgraded - or, in the case of Australia, whether the game should be banned entirely.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, the BBFC has taken the view that even if the mod can be considered as part of the game, it would not change the 18 rating granted in this territory - presumably recognising that in a game featuring the level of violence, swearing and sexually charged content that San Andreas does, a badly animated sex scene where one of the protagonists doesn't even undress is hardly the most shocking thing in the world. |
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