Tonight marks the release of Halo 3. I’ll risk the possible lynching by a crowd of angry, pitchfork-toting fanboys and say it: I never really got what the hype was about.
Sure, it’s a competent first-person shooter, and the online capabilities are excellent, but c’mon, it’s pulpy space opera with guns. It’s good, but it’s not exactly the reinvention of the wheel or anything.
Anyhow, Master Chief’s back, riding a wave of advertising hype and testosterone into the videogame equivalent of Return of the Jedi. And, of course, Jack Thompson’s back as well.
I, for one, love this guy. Just look at him; he’s like a Hair Club for Men advertisement with a dimply chin and the piercing eyes of a man on a Mission from God.
Yeah, this is the guy I want setting arbitrary moral boundaries for my kids!
Sure, we can hate him for being the millenials’ equivalent of Tipper Gore, but as I always say, “live and let live.” (I do say that, right?)
He’s even got the stones to threaten the biggest corporation on earth on the eve of the largest software release on earth. Check out this scathing bit of rhetoric:
Bill Gates
Microsoft Corporation
Redmond, Washington
Re: Halo 3Dear Mr. Gates:
As you know, the Federal Trade Commission has repeatedly found that games rated “Mature” by the video game industry-captured Entertainment Software Rating Board are routinely sold to kids under the age of 17 despite the age rating. The most recent failure rate of the ratings on “Mature” games, according to the FTC, is 42%. The entire rating system is a fraud, and broken, the latter description aptly provided by Senator Hillary Clinton.
As you also know, Lee Boyd Malvo trained on Microsoft’s Halo to further enable him to become the remarkably efficient DC Beltway Sniper. That was reported by NBC News at the time and was noted in Malvo’s criminal trial.
You appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes II and rather revealing and usefully noted that “the cool thing about these games is that they transport you to a world you think is real.” Precisely. Capcom has recently disclosed to investors that your video game industry’s violent games, sold to children, pose a real hazard to the health of the industry. Right on.
The hyperviolent Microsoft Xbox 360 game Halo 3 is scheduled by your company for commercial release in September of this year. The Beta version that was released last week shows us all just how violent the game is and how inappropriate it is for play by anyone under 17, as the “Mature” rating it will surely receive indicates.
Here’s the deal, Mr. Gates: Either Microsoft undertakes dramatic, real steps, through its marketing, wholesale, and retail operations to assure that Halo 3 is not sold, via the Internet and in stores, directly to anyone under 17, or I shall proceed to make sure that Microsoft is held to that standard by appropriate legal means. I have done that before successfully as to Best Buy, and I shall do so again as to Microsoft and all retailers of Halo 3.
Regards, Jack Thompson
Now, that’s courage, ladies and gentlemen…the courage real men have. Real men with hair on their chests and fire in their loins! Men who…oh, really, I can’t do this with a straight face.
This guy’s chasing an ambulance that doesn’t exist. When he went after Rockstar’s Bully last year, he very nearly got himself disbarred. He’s been reprimanded by judges in several states for his histrionics and general incompetence, and although you’ve got to give him some credit for mindless persistence, you’ve also got to wonder why he keeps doing it.
Here’s my theory. Jack Thompson is secretly working for one of the major entertainment companies. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
You see, there’s a secret cabal of developers and marketers in the industry who get together late at night, don black robes and plot to turn all our brains into mulchy goo by reducing our attention span to such a point that we can’t remember anything that happened more than 0.0035 seconds ago. Using their superior technology, they gene-spliced a cornfed Fundamentalist boy from Ohio and set him on a path that would lead him to pursue a Law degree at a seclusive midwestern university.
After a moderately lucrative career as a malpractice attorney, Jack was ready to undertake his true life’s work as the Unholy Pitbull of Censorship. In 1989, he convinced a Federal trial judge that the 2 Live Crew’s work was “obscene,” and even managed to get them arrested. The 2 Live Crew were anything but talented, but through Jack’s efforts, they became superstars, as well as horribly-chosen, self-proclaimed champions of the First Amendment.
Again in 1992, he joined the Freedom Alliance and brought Ice T’s hilariously inept “Cop Killer” to national attention. The record on which “Cop Killer” had appeared initially sold so poorly that Warner had dropped it from circulation before it came to Mr. Thompson’s attention. After he brought his lawsuit against Time Warner, the record went back into print and sales skyrocketed.
Now, he’s working for the software companies. He called Bully a “Columbine simulator,” and he brought a lawsuit against it, but he’s also a major shareholder in the company that produced it. Do the math, people.
And what kind of name is, “Jack Thompson,” anyhow? Sounds suspiciously bland to me, almost too middle-America.
Of course, I have no evidence to prove that Mr. Thompson is really the horrible offspring of an unnatural mating between David Hasslehoff and Yasmine Bleeth. That’s because it’s been buried by the giant corporations who rely on Mr. Thomspon’s antics to bring them the type of publicity they couldn’t otherwise buy.
Besides, this is the internet, and like one of Mr. Thompson’s clever legal briefs, I don’t have to deal with such mundane concerns as “evidence.” I can just spew whatever I want and claim it’s fact.
The truth is out there, people.