Head to Head : Jack Thompson vs. Henry Jenkins

[Deadend]

1up (http://www.1ip.com) has a pair of interviews on Violence in games. First with the crazy-man lawyer who hates games, and then with the MIT professor who helped games be seen as First Amendment protected.

Read it Here (http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141144)

Jack Thompson, he just seems to have trouble making real evidence. Saying that teenage boys who played GTA are 2x as likely to be involved in violence is crap, as then you could extend it to 'males who have played Xbox or PS2 games' and still have similar stats. Or saying that parents who do not let their children play games that the parent cosiders inapproriate and the child respects their parents command are less likely to be involved in violence. I am sick of that guy.

[Taco]

Ahem:

I suppose federal judges by and large don't have a problem with mental molestation of children with murder simulators.

EGM: You once compared Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, to Saddam Hussein.

JT: If I did, I want to apologize to Saddam Hussein.

hahahaha

[pur3r4ge]

Ack. He operates under the assumption that games have a causal role in these crimes, rather then a corollary role. So is a person made violent by playing the game, or is a violent person drawn to the game? He can't say, psychologists can't say, and no one could prove it one way or the other. Blaming the game is bunk from a psychological standpoint, but he's on a mission to make a name for himself, and it's working.

[Abash Alarmist]

Yeah, to be labeled a moron amongst the more intelligble part of society. I want to have his babies.

[bobbler]

Jack Thompson, while his intentions may be 'okay' (at least in his mind), is a fucking moron of the highest degree. He is deispicable in the way he goes to any extent just to pretend to prove his point... Insults/slander/defamation/etc -- regardless of what he thinks, the end does not justify the means. He's like a five year old zealot towards a stupid cause. He gives lawyers a bad name, he gives zealots a bad name, and he gives humans a bad name.

[Abash Alarmist]

Lawyers already is a bad name, with or without Jack Thompson.

[DLemasa]

Thompson is a whore. I'm a lawyer, and it's obvious to me he's simply (and desperately) trying to nail a niche/boutique practice making hay with the games industry. I imagine he thinks he's like the big tobacco lawyers and he'll evetually hit big. Problem is, he's too inflammatory and his arguments don;t hold legal water.

He's a footnote, nothing more --

[mister_slim]

Jack Thompson is like Ralph Nader but crazy.

[Nuggsy]

Does it seem incredibly hypocritical that a f**ker like Thompson is attempting to make money off of this? He blasts game companies for making money off of these games and their controversial natures but, isn't he doing the same thing?

Oh yeah, and did anyone see his stab at liberals in those comments? I consider myself rather "middle of the road" but Jebus...what an ass.

[sTubbs]

I wonder what this Jack Thompson would do if he won just one lawsuit and made millions of dollars. Who here thinks he would continue the fight? No one? Ok, now who here thinks he would immediately stop and retire? Most of you? That sounds about right.

Serious, this guy is on a level of douche baggery that is being shared only with Bob Novak and a handful of other douchebags. My favourite part of the interview was this:


EGM: Do you play games?

JT: I play them to the extent that I need to make DVD copies of the killing scenes for presentations or court. Have I played San Andreas? Yes. I would have loved it if EGM asked a follow up question along the lines of:

"Considering you play violent video games, do you think that you are more likely to commit violent acts?"

What a hypocritical jackass.

PS: Oh, and who else feels sorry for his 12 year old son? I mean being allowed to play 'E' rated games only must be a bitch. I admit that sometimes it is hard to distinguish between some 'T' games and 'M' games, but considering how innocent many of the 'T' games are [some sports titles for instance] I feel sorry for the kid. Doubly so considering Jack 'Ass' Thompson is his father.

PPS: I also find it terrifying that this is some of the best journalism I have seen in years, bar none.

[bobbler]

Oh the irony...

If his son shot him.

[Rommel]

Bravo to EGM, something I never thought I would type.

I would say that Mr. Thompson is at the twirling his mustache level of evil insanity, but he is teetering close to laughing maniacally at the moon to a background of smoking test tubes and jacob's ladders. He ended his interview with a threat! To paraphrase... "You will rue the day you met me!" Sometimes interviews end with issued warnings of effects they percieve, but never events that they are putting into motion.

This is a man who does not quote his sources or give his opposition respectful dialogue. If I wrote a paper for my BA in a manner indicative of his style, I would be kicked out of school.

[RMan]

Well, I'm not too fond of either of these guys, but yea, Thompson seems like a whack job. Of course, being posted on a gaming enthusiast site, I'm not exactly surprised.

[bobbler]

I read an interview last year where he said he was going to put Rockstar out of business and that we should 'mark his words'.

As if a single man who has no respect for sanity could take on an industry that has all facts on their side.

I cannot get over the fact that people like him somehow managed to get out of childhood without being beaten to death by nature and humanity.

[Deadend]

I wonder what this Jack Thompson would do if he won just one lawsuit and made millions of dollars. Who here thinks he would continue the fight? No one? Ok, now who here thinks he would immediately stop and retire? Most of you? That sounds about right.



What a hypocritical jackass.

PS: Oh, and who else feels sorry for his 12 year old son? I mean being allowed to play 'E' rated games only must be a bitch. I admit that sometimes it is hard to distinguish between some 'T' games and 'M' games, but considering how innocent many of the 'T' games are [some sports titles for instance] I feel sorry for the kid. Doubly so considering Jack 'Ass' Thompson is his father.

PPS: I also find it terrifying that this is some of the best journalism I have seen in years, bar none.

Retire after winning once?

Heellll no!
Once you win that first case... you can go after someone else, and then someone else, every victory means your odds of winning go up each time, and by the 4th place he attacks, his evidence will be referencing his own damn cases.

Did he pass the bar by chance?

[Demize99]

A monkey with a broken pencil could pass the bar. Being a lawyer isn't tough, being a good lawyer is tough.

[Heretic Machine]

If video games encouraged violence then Jack Thompson would of been dead a long time ago.

[pur3r4ge]

Yeah, no doubt some blood hungry developer would have attacked him in the street. Imagine how violent they must be, if simple exposure to their work turns you into a remorseless killer.

[Mason]

Lawyers tend to be to the left of normal people, and judges tend to be the left of the lawyers. Federal judges tend to be the left of them. So you have a bunch of First Amendment absolutists who block these kinds of lawsuits. State courts, however, are far more responsive to parents. I suppose federal judges by and large don't have a problem with mental molestation of children with murder simulators.

So...right wing whackos like this guy want to attack the judiciary for both 1) being "first amendment absolutists" and 2) not sticking to the literal constitution in deciding case law. Wow. The cognitive dissonance of that would explode the head of a lesser being, but wingnuts still somehow take themselves seriously.

I guess "to the left" is hip slang for "renders valid legal verdicts based on the laws of our society". Because it doesn't take an evil liberal conspiracy to get those lawsuits that sue Sony, AMD, Microsoft, Ubisoft, ATI, MCI, and Ford for Columbine damages laughed out of court.

Game publishers, console manufacturers, and retailers. They're all in cahoots with one another to have a rating system that doesn't work.

Paranoid much?

Let's see, the bored dude at EBGames who sells GTA to kids is either too lazy to care about pointless ratings systems, or a pawn of a vast global conspiracy which involves id employees sneaking into children's homes on Christmas eve and replacing puppies with Bloody Gun-Sodomy IV: The Sharpening. And then being mean to the puppies. I think I'll go with the crazy paranoid explanation, too!

The very same people like Doug [Lowenstein] who say games can't encourage anyone to do anything are the same people who tend to get upset about tobacco ads because they encourage kids to smoke.

This one will actually trick some people. But just how the hell is smoking like killing people? Smoking as a teenager can cause some future health problems, but the force of advertising or peer pressure is enough to overcome vague concerns about distant future problems. Killing another human being has very drastic and immediate consequences, that all but the most psychotically deranged are aware of. I can't imagine a video game that was so cool that it convinced me that killing another person was worth any of the moral, personal, and legal consequences it would entail. If a game could have that effect on me, I would not be of a fit mental state.

Old Jack is just nuts. So what, did video games kill his father and rape his mother, or something?

[Buddha Lotus]

Jack Thompson is nothing more than a money hungry lawyer who chases the big money makers that he precieves to be vunerable..

Allot of you may not remember but back in the early 1980's Thompson was against rap music. He was suing burgenoing rap music companies back then for 100's of millions of dollars.

You have to think that if Jack was in the 1950's he would be trying to sue the comic book companies.

I dont think that Jack gives a fuck about children or anything else. He is trying to get money.

Jack is on a locval radio morning show here in Alabama nearly every month. The guy is a loon and often looses himself making his points. The last time he was on this show he stated that he agreed with Al-Quida and the terrorists that American society needed "cleaning up". He was making the point that we brought it on oursleves that we were attcked. Nice.

Earlier on that same show he was takling a caller from a gamer who was calling him out on some of his studies. Jack quoted a study from Hollywood/Harvard (I love how he words these things to make them seem worse than they are) that said that brain chemistry and activity went up when people play video games. Wow. Really Jack? The caller laughed at this and sarcastically said: "oh.. well if HARVARD says it is must be true!"

What Jack said next is indicitive of who he is:

Jack angrily repsonded:

"NO!! You dont get it!! Its right BECAUSE I SAY ITS RIGHT!!"

He is an idiot. .. and its not just because I dissagree with him. If a saner person was making his point I would at least listen to him.

[Lodin]

Eventually there is going to be a Columbine to the factor of 10, a slaughter in a school by a crazed gamer. And when that happens, when America figures out these kids were filled up with virtual violence, Congress may ban the games altogether. You wise guys who think you're so clever about saying what kids ought to play and then putting [Mature] games in the hands of those kids, you will wish you listened to me.I somehow doubt a person who can say something like this really wants to make the world a better place.

[yutt]

Eventually there is going to be a Columbine to the factor of 10, a slaughter in a school by a crazed gamer.
He says with a grin, and a hopeful twinkle in his eye.

[Deadend]

When he said

Columbine to the factor of 10

I thought of Team America and "It's gonna be 9/11 times 100" ".... 91100" "Thats right" "oh my god"

so Columbine^10 is.... what the hell! You can't perform multiplication on words!

[Talanvor]

Originally Posted by Jack Thompson
Lawyers tend to be to the left of normal people, and judges tend to be the left of the lawyers. Federal judges tend to be the left of them. So you have a bunch of First Amendment absolutists who block these kinds of lawsuits. State courts, however, are far more responsive to parents. I suppose federal judges by and large don't have a problem with mental molestation of children with murder simulators.

Um, Federal judges usually side with corporations/government. They're more authoritarian than anything. I guess he just means the 9th circuit court of appeals in California.

And if a parent is so concerned about their child being mentally molested, why don't they just take Johnny's controller away? Maybe not pony up the $55 for the game in the first place? FFS, if a game is called Grand Theft Auto, it might not be imparting Wholesome Christian Values©.

But, it's really the evil liberals and that ungodly freedom of speech thing that's the real problem. The First Amendment was written by Satan himself, but God must have intervened and put the Second one in.

[cppcrusader]

Did anyone know that the Xbox has parental controls to restrict games played based on their rating? I just found that in the Xbox dashboard a few weeks ago when a friend and I were discussing this article.