20 Apr '07 - 376 W - + 6 - 10 Mainstream media with a clue
Since I often complain about the media, I figured I'd
point out there good deeds as well:
The shooting on the Virginia Tech campus was only hours old, police hadn't even identified the gunman, and yet already the perpetrator had been fingered and was in the midst of being skewered in the media.
Video games. They were to blame for the dozens dead and wounded. They were behind the bloodiest massacre in U.S. history.
Or so Jack Thompson told Fox News and, in the days that followed, would continue to tell anyone who'd listen.
...
When Jack Thompson gets worked up, he refers to gamers as "knuckleheads." He calls video games "mental masturbation."
When he's talking about himself and his crusade against violent games, he calls himself an "educator." He likes to use the word "pioneer."
...
Meanwhile, by Tuesday, The Washington Post had posted a story on its Web site stating that several youths who knew Cho said that in high school he'd been a fan of violent video games, especially "Counter-Strike."
But a short time later, the newspaper removed that paragraph from the story without explanation. Meanwhile, authorities released a search warrant listing the items found in Cho's dorm room. Not a single video game, console or gaming gadget was on the list, though a computer was confiscated. And in an interview with Chris Matthews of "Hardball," Cho's university suite-mate said he had never seen Cho play video games.
None of this seems to matter to Thompson.
"This is not rocket science. When a kid who has never killed anyone in his life goes on a rampage and looks like the Terminator, he's a video gamer," he told MSNBC.com.
And the trippiest part:
even Rush Limbaugh is coming down on the side of reason this time.
Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There's more to this than that… it may desensitize people, but it doesn't turn everybody into mass murderers…
People have a tough time accepting a relatively simple explanation for something of this scale. But how many people are playing video games out there? How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns?