Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Jack Thompson Interview

Jack Thompson was interviewed by Fox News at 2:13 p.m. CST yesterday about the massacre at Virginia Tech.

I forced myself to listen to the full interview (which you can see here). Thompson repeated refers to first-person shooters and Grand Theft Auto as "trainers" and "murder simulators." He makes it sound like a foregone conclusion that the shooter must have "trained" using video games. He was as wildly inaccurate as he always is in these situations.

At the end, the fawning Fox News anchor actually said Thompson was "eloquent."

I'll guess with 99% certainly that Thompson was text-messaging and phoning every major news outlet as soon as he heard about the shooting, desperately trying to get on for an interview. And he succeeded, not that Fox News is any more legitimate as a media outlet than Thompson is as an "expert" on school shootings.

Look, I've said this before, but Thompson serves a purpose. He represents the "best expert" the anti-gaming advocates can muster, and he has been repeatedly discredited, disciplined by various state bars (with more proceedings ongoing), and responsible for states having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs as a result of passing clearly unconstitutional laws ($92,000 just yesterday in Louisiana, where he previously trumpeted his involvement in the legislative process).

This is a horrific tragedy, and anyone like Thompson who is ideologically profiteering within hours of the last body hitting the ground is beneath contempt.

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