MSNBC Blasts Jack Thompson's Blame of Video Games for VT Shootings

An article, by Winda Benedetti of MSNBC, provides some needed smack-down to religious anti-gaming Jack Thompson's insistence on video gaming as a center piece of blame for the Virginia Tech shootings.

I highly recommend giving the article a good once over, but feel justified in providing a couple highlights for those who want the skinny in brief. Referring to Thompson's claim that Cho Seung-Hui was undoubtedly a gamer, we have since learned:

"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."

The article goes on to mention the ridiculous letter Thompson sent to Bill Gates and Thompson's various failed lawsuits against video game companies along the way. The article picks up again with:

"And for all of Thompson's claims that violent video games are the cause of school shottings, Sternheimer points out that before this week's Virginia Tech massacre, the most deadly school shooting in history took place at the University of Texas in Austin...in 1966. Not even "Pong" had been invented at that time."

In all, it needs to be repeated that Jack Thompson is a complete jackass. More importantly, it should be stated that Jack Thompson is a jackass for this reason, if none other; His accusations trivialize and ignore the real and underlying causes which exist for this and other tragedies. His nonsense defers attention and muddies the sensibilities of the uniformed who may subscribe to his baseless and irrational claims, diverting needed focus from the aspects of these tragedies that we do need to acknowledge. Namely among those are the issues of depression, delusion, anti-social and violent behavior (in this case expressed through Cho's writing and plays), and of course, how our society and it's officials may have failed to counter-act events which can lead to tragic situations like those at Virginia Tech.

Clearly, Jack Thompson does more harm than he has ever helped. His lies and grandstanding in the name of a cause having absolutely no foundation in reality is wholly reflective of his ongoing and counter-productive irrationality. The public needs to recognize him for what he is, and then move on, forever ignoring his wasteful ranting.

Sadly, he is just the first of many that this holds true for.

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Rush: Righteous Defender of Video Games?

As a follow up to yesterday's blog entry, I thought I might stun you with this revelation: Rush Limbaugh has slightly moved *down* on the jackass severity system.

Once you've picked yourself up from the floor, keep in mind that it is most likely a temporary situation--surely he'll say something to slide back up the chart. Before you think I've gone mad or have made some gross error, let me elaborate a bit as to how he managed this remarkable feat.

As mentioned yesterday, jackasses tend to prominently exhibit their jackass-ness within short proximity to most major calamities or tragedies. Rush surprisingly demonstrated a bit of restraint and--gasp--even logic, rather than simply throw banal rhetoric and blame to politicize the Virginia Tech shooting. Let me provide some brief excerpts from the conversation between Rush and a caller (or check out the full transcript for yourself here):

Caller: "... What I really think is an issue is video violence, video gaming. I will guarantee you, I'll bet my last dollar in my pocket, that this shooter will be found to have been a compulsive video gamer, and when people are living that kind of lifestyle--and college students do this a lot."

Rush: "Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus, though. There's more to this than that...In this case, let's not jump the gun on this guy and make him a video gamer. We'll find out soon enough everything we want to know about this guy, and I guarantee you that much of what we find out will be America's fault. Just be patient. This stuff will come out."

Rush, continuing a bit later: "How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns? If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this. You have here a sick individual, an evil individual who committed a random act. But if you want to start blaming the video games, this guy was this or that, weeeeell, then you've gotta maybe talk about banning them because that's the same tack that's taken with guns."

Okay...so it wasn't a perfect display of logic or a total failure to start loading his cannons in preparation for blaming something. What it wasn't, however, was some knee-jerk commentary that blamed someone or something external for the tragedy when, as he acknowledges, no one has the first inkling what influenced the killer, so far.

As an additional note unrelated to Limbaugh and in reference to the possibility of Scientology weighing in on the Virginia Tech shooting; I have so far been unable to dig up anything concrete establishing that they have, indeed, blamed psychiatric drugs (or psychiatry itself) as a factor. This is not to say that they haven't--I just don't know for certain--but so far I've not heard or seen anything beyond the source highlighted yesterday. One way or another, the jackass meter is going off, and the jackass may be the site acting as source for the claim rather than Scientology. Go figure!

I did, however, come across this amusing commentary--in the form of a comic strip--expressing how the media as a whole can set off our jackass detectors. This should be a given, as the mass media will happily insinuate and lay blame in any number of ways, before uncovering the true source or cause for an event such as the Virginia Tech shooting. Naturally, this means that virtually everyone in the mass media is a jackass, but you probably knew that already.

Jackass Detector

You may have heard of Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. His 'kit' outlines methods we all can reliably use to detect...baloney...as Carl so gently describes it. If, at this very moment, you are scratching your head while saying, "Carl who? Baloney wha...?," you need to immediately go to your nearest bookstore and purchase a copy of Sagan's Demon Haunted World. The moment you arrive back home, sit down and read it from cover to cover. You will not regret it. You may even write to thank me.

After you settle down and stop gawking at Sagan's brilliant and provoking word-smithing, feel free to come back and finish reading today's blog entry. At that point I will no longer fear exposing you to the jackasses and the ridiculous ideas they have conjured up, all of which I'm about to discuss.

For those remaining (or those of you returning), let's get started! In this installment, I'd like to show you a surefire method to detect a jackass--defined as an individual who frequently disseminates...baloney...in a careless and idiotic manner. I'm trying to be Sagan-like-gentle, here.

Unfortunately, this method of jackass detection usually requires that a truly horrific event occur somewhere in the world. Well known tragedies include 9/11, the Asian-Tsunami, and currently, the tragic shooting at Virgina Tech.

During calamities such as these the primary rule for jackass detection is simple; jackasses will quickly proclaim that a group, lifestyle, activity, philosophy, or political persuasion is to blame for the tragedy. Take note that jackasses do not limit themselves to this cursory list and may blame a wide variety of people, places, or ideas beyond those mentioned here.

You can accurately calculate how severe of a jackass the individual is based on, a) how quickly after the tragic event the jackass makes their blame-announcement, and b) how much time passes between the jackass' blame-announcement and the point it becomes known who or what is the actual cause for the tragedy.

In the case of tragedies caused by natural events, such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, or tidal waves, the jackass making the blame-announcement should be considered a jackass of red-alert status automatically; be sure to place such individuals on the very top of your warning lists, and distribute those to friends, family, and complete strangers immediately.

Permit me to provide a few examples of red-alert status jackasses detected as a result of the Virgina Tech shooting:

The first to set off my personal jackass detector was Jack Thompson. By way of an appearance on Fox News (a mere five hours after the shooting) and later by press release, Thompson proceeded to blame video games and video game violence as an underlying and probable cause for the shooting. For those familiar with Thompson, this comes as little surprise, particularly since no information about the killer, his motivation, or his video game habits were known to any extent. So, clearly that means video games are to blame.

He was followed up by none other than Dr. Phil, a jackass of entirely different strain, but clearly capable of holding such a title without issue. He also blamed video games while speaking with Larry King on Larry King Live, stating, "We're going to have to start addressing those issues [ violence in video games ] and recognizing that the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose."

Okie dokie, Doc!

It doesn't stop there, however. Maybe your jackass detector picked up an alert on this next one; Ken Ham. You know Ken, right? Also known in some circles as "creationist jackass"?

Anyhow, he whipped up an article speaking on the tragedy, explaining, "We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals--and humans--arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people's thinking."

Is it just me, or is he outright blaming atheism for this? Clearly, all atheists are purposeless and hopeless--utterly despondent about the pointless nature of reality and their equally pointless existence within it--so much so that Ken is betting that Cho Seung-Hui, the young man identified today as the shooter, is either an atheist or so influenced by godless science propagandized by schools such as Virginia Tech that he became irrevocably depressed, generating his inevitable urge to commit mass murder.

You know, the same thing that happens to all immoral and uncontrollable atheists. At least, he'd like you to think as much, even if he doesn't really believe such tripe himself. (Not that he doesn't believe it, mind you. Ken has demonstrated with a terrifying sense of frequency that he is capable of believing the ridiculous...and I don't just mean Jesus!)

To wash his hands from any insensibility that you may think you just heard, Ham continues, "I'm not at all saying the person who committed these murders at Virginia Tech was driven by a belief in millions of years or evolution. I don't know why this person did what he did, except the obvious: that it was a result of sin."

Riiiight. Let me just ... place ... your ... name ... there, top of the list.

P.S. My jackass detector went off again--just enough to give me notice to start looking deeper and I'm yet to confirm it fully--but it appears that the Church of Scientology may be blaming this incident on, you guessed it, "psychiatric drug connections."