What is it with anti-video-game advocates? Almost all of them are slimy somehow. Leland Yee, author of the law that the Supreme Court ultimately used to ban applying obscenity to video games, loves to use rules lawyering to be on both sides of an issue. Jack Thompson had a long and messy history before he started whining about Rockstar. Let’s at least have somebody who can chuck a rock a reasonable distance in his glass house. But, no, instead we’ve got Keith Vaz.
Vaz, aside from having a name straight out of a bad ’80s Star Trek knockoff, is a huge scumbag: he’s been busted for lying on his taxes, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, and hates both civil rights (he loves the idea of detaining possible terrorists 42 days without charging them) and science (he’s a big proponent of giving homeopathic remedies government funding). Oh, and he got thrown out of the House of Commons for a while for being, well, slimy. None of this has stopped him from preaching about how Counter-Strike causes hate crimes and helping to get “Manhunt 2” banned in Britain.
And now he’s going after “Modern Warfare 3”. Or, well, actually “Call of Duty 3”. Yes, that’s what he calls it in the public motion he filed to have the British government condemn it because of “gratuitous acts of violence” and he has magic studies that have never been released to the public that prove video games like totally cause violence.
Fortunately, the adults in the House have tweaked his little resolution to include praise for the game’s technical aspects and urging the BBFC to uphold its rating. Note to Vaz, if he’s reading: Jack Thompson would like you to stop helping.
[ via the moral guardians at Rock, Paper, Shotgun ]