"These are real lives. These are real people that are in the ground now because of this game. I have no doubt about it," said Thompson, a Florida attorney and fervent critic the of video game industry."
But perhaps he's right, you question. Maybe violent video games DO cause otherwise mentally sound individuals to commit heinous acts of violence against others. After all, the Florida attorney managed to convince Oprah's "friend" and alleged therapist Dr. Phil of the same. These two, a doctor and a lawyer. are "experts," right? They certainly know more than we, as laypeople, do, right?
Except when they don't.
As usual, Thompson reacted with reckless abandon in regard to the facts. According to MSNBC:
"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."
Wow! So perhaps Jack Thompson's opinion isn't so rooted in reality, after all. He is absolutely correct, though, in saying that this isn't rocket science. It's not. The killer didn't play video games, or so say the police, the media, and those who knew him. On the other hand, he was mentally unsound, as anyone who takes the lives of so many others surely must be.
And, yet, Jack Thomspon, best known for blaming mass killings on "Grand Theft Auto 3", "Doom", and "Counterstrike" among other games, and for trying to get the sale of the "bully" and the latest Grand Theft Auto game banned, charges on, defying any attempts at logic that might view the world through less obstructed lenses. Reacting to the news that Cho Seung-Hui, the killer in the Virginia Tech massacre, didn't appear to be gamer of any variety, Thompson responded:
"He might have killed somebody but he wouldn't have killed 32 if he hadn't rehearsed it and trained himself like a warrior on virtual reality. It can't be done. It just doesn't happen."
Certainly a nice soundbite, but one devoid of reason. Prior to the Virginia Tech killings, the most deadly school shoting in U.S. history happened in 1966, well before the founders of Atari could even invison "Pong" much less "Doom". This begs the question of what exactly are Jack Thompson's motivations for these accusations. The answer is complicated.
Thompson has made a living as a "culture warrior," a self-described Christian conservative who has fought for cencorship of mass media in all its forms. His objections to language, sex, and violence in media have nothing to do with the killings they allegedly lead to, but are rooted in a religious and political ideology that deems the First Ammendment (freedom of speech) unimportant (unless it's to further their own views), but the Second Amendment (right to bear arms) as a critical right that must be strictly upheld, no matter what the consequences.
It is the natural instinct of people to analyze a tragedy to attempt to understand the underlying causes. Given the number of gun killings each year in the United States, it is logical for many to examine whether guns should be so readily available in this country. Some, such as the Republican Thompson, owe a great deal to the gun lobby, and must try to derail any possible blame before the masses of Americans come out against that industry. "Blame mass media!" has quickly become their rallying cry: by this logic, it is purely the fault of the liberal media (including the video game industry) that such tragedies are so common in American culture.
Yet this ignores the obvious: the media and the video game industry are world-wide multinational corporations, that release the same product everywhere on the planet as they release in the U.S. So, why then is it primarily our culture that continually suffers, time and time again, from violence. Other first world countries DO NOT have an even remotely similar level of violence (including gun violence) as that which is taking over our culture.
If anything, our culture is already MUCH more conservative than most other nations, and therein may lie part of the problem. Declaring intolerant values as being somehow better than more accepting ones has placed an entire class of our culture in an impossible position. In examining the character of Cho, it has been said that he was homosexual, and unable to accept that fact within our society. This certainly does not excuse his actions, but it is revealing, taken in the context of the incredibly high suicide rate among young male homosexuals in the U.S. An intollerant society that views homosexuality as a sin and a disease that can somehow be "cured", is certainly far more likely to lead to mental instability among those unable to reconcile themselves with society's expectations, than are video games.
Unlike Jack Thompson, I don't claim to have easy answers for how our society became such a violent culture or why disturbed individuals in this country so frequently take their own lives as well as those around them, but I have many ideas. Why not try investigating the easy access to handguns, the intolerant attitude toward anyone different from the societal norm, the celebrity culture to which many of these killers aspire to join, the lack of effective public health services to potentially help those who suffer from serious mental illness, or our nation's rush to military violence in attempts to confront our perceived enemies. Those issues, which we seem unwilling to deal with, get ignored, in favor of pushing our society, at any cost, toward a more conservative ideology, that views us all as sinners and hedonists, and demands that many repent for being who they are.
In the end, our hearts go out to the friends and family of the victims in this senseless tragedy, who, like us, are probably searching for answers to guestions that cannot be answered. While "tragedy chasers" like Jack Thompson run to get in front of any camera rolling tape, it is important to try to block out the voices of those whose reaction was scripted long before the events occured, and to continue working toward finding real solutions to the problems plaguing our society long after the media attention and Jack Thompsons of the world have moved on to the next story of the day.
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