Kevin McCullough's lying face

Kevin McCullough posted a far-right criticism of Mass Effect based on someone else's impression of a single, nearly unrelated aspect of the game: in other words, his article has no basis in fact whatsoever. Here's his article... oops, it seems like the website has retracted his lying pile of filth. Luckily, any infamous article ends up re-posted somewhere:

The "Sex-Box" Race for President
Townhall.com | January 13, 2008 | Kevin McCullough

I know that they all probably assume they have better, much more important, urgent, timely, things to campaign on, but I sure would like to get their individual takes on the new video game that one company is marketing to fifteen year old boys.

It's called "Mass Effect" and it allows its players - universally male no doubt - to engage in the most realistic sex acts ever conceived. One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size of the images they wish to "engage" and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game "persons" hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of.

The objections to such filth should be simple to understand.

Starting with the disgusting idea that one can "create" their own versions of what people look like, removing warts, moles, and bald spots while enhancing - shall we say - the extended features of the game's characters tends to objectify women, sex, and human relationships. Right? We can all agree on this?

Then there's the dishonesty behind the game' title. "Mass Effect" sounds like a war game with a deadly virus that is spreading unless the GI-Joes are able to defeat the evil and deadly substance and it's covert war plan. By it's design, kids could ask for it, or for their parents' Best Buy Card to go purchase it with nary a raised eye-brow. Generic, non-descriptive, and relatively harmless.

But it IS marketed for the X-Box 360, perhaps the most visually stimulating gaming system ever made. The software for such allows the blending of DVD video, component graphics, and the manipulation of actual pictures so that an alternate reality engulfs the fifteen year old boy playing it without much objection.

Now if I have trouble with my son taking his James Bond 007 games a little too emotionally, imagine the powerful effect that hormones add to the mix when the player's own character is copulating like jack rabbits with super-models, actresses, and anyone else they can spend the patience to create, name, and "put into play."

I hear the libertarian Ron Paul's answer already, "Government has no business censoring freedom of expression." Figures, he's a libertarian.

In the race for President there has been a lot of discussion about faith and it's impact on the lives of the individual candidate. Some pretty inane ones like Carl Cameron's less lucid moment this past week when he posed the inquiry about marital submission to Governor Mike Huckabee.

Yet here's a question that deserves to be asked, and in all likelihood will not be: "How much moral judgement should the President push into legislative issues that are likely to severely damage our children's innocence, function, and capability?"

I hear the nay-sayers claiming I'm being the wild and crazed Bible thumper I've always been - but its a worthwhile question isn't it?

If a pre-teen, teen, young adult, or adult male plays such a game in which the women DO submit without choice, are made to appear as Barbie streetwalkers, and perform whatever act can be imagined, what's to stop that same male from assuming that the women in his "other world" shouldn't be forced to do the same.

We now know because of the lengthy track record of serial killer after another that addictive use of pornography was prevalent in case after case - long before the switch got flipped and what their masturbatory imaginations have given into became what they were forcing real live human beings to do.

And because of the digital chip age in which we live - "Mass Effect" can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes.

With it's "over the net" capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.

Yes there will be many snickers that I decided to bring this issue up in the Presidential cycle of 2008 but how refreshing would it be for a President to prove to the nation that his own manhood was not in question and put his pen and signature to a bill that dealt with such simulated sex excess in a way that was punitive to its creators to such a degree that they would never recover from it?

As technology continues to push the limits of imagination and interaction more and more the brain, the emotions, the feelings will integrate with physical responses in reality. And while the makers of such trash seem to be pushing our next generation of young men through the gates of hell as fast as is humanly possible, it needn't be that way.

Here's hoping that as the next President will be forced to deal with this continual emerging reality - and enemy that has set its site to our destruction from within - that we will have elected a man of such character that he will have precision in the clarity of his response.

How would that be for a bold and uncompromising "Mass Effect?"

-http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1952968/posts

I do love Penny Arcade's take on the situation (complete with comic, check that out too), which also addresses the hole that McCullough continues to dig himself into. Also, apparently they mislinked the article upon which McCullough seems to have based his impression.

Yet even PA can miss certain points of a story. McCullough actually apologized in a previous blog entry of his, and I quote: "Based on the multitude of response by gamers who share my concern for decency in the entertainment of our children, it is obvious that I had been misinformed on at least two points of substance in my original column. For this I DO apologize to the gaming universe!" Still, he continues to assume and criticize on a topic on which he knows nothing, less than even Jack Thompson, and that's saying a lot.

Golden Compass of not being an anti-religious dick

I saw an interesting post on Xanga about Golden Compass, or rather, the principles behind not seeing it.

So here's the gist. As far as I know (and I'm too lazy to wiki it), and I'm sure many of you know as well, Golden Compass is based on a series of books written by an atheist for the express purpose of "killing God" - in other words, manifesting the downfall of Christianity in the form of a story.

Back to the Xanga post. This guy is against seeing the Golden Compass movie. Not because it's a bad movie, not because the story is bad. In fact, he says it's probably a great movie, based on a great book. And though the guy is Christian, he's not avoiding it because of the author's beliefs. He's boycotting the movie because the author thinks he can deliberately downtrod on Christians and their beliefs and still make money off of it. It doesn't matter if the studios eliminate the anti-Christian motifs from the movie; the fact of the matter is that the author is essentially giving all Christians the finger, and one way or another, he's benefitting from it.

It's a point that I didn't see before. I've heard of Christians avoiding the movie, for the obvious reasons, but I didn't share their views: I only saw it as another movie. Granted, I probably wasn't going to see it anyway, but now I have a damn good reason. I fully agree with the Xanga guy's point. In fact, I'll take it a couple steps further.

While he urges all Christians to avoid the movie, I urge EVERYONE to avoid it. Atheist, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Jain, agnostic, Unitarian, what-have-you... no matter what you believe, I think all people can agree that it takes a real fucking lowlife to step all over what someone else believes. It's a virtual Holocaust, all dolled up by Hollywood. Oh yes, I'm comparing Philip Pullman to Hitler.

Of course, I won't avoid seeing it altogether, nor am I saying you should. I'm just not going to pay for it, or expect anyone else to. While I'm generally cautious about mentioning people's piracy habits, I'm fully advocating this: download Golden Compass. You get to see your movie, and it's a nice big fuck you to Pullman for each person who sees his movie without paying. Fire up Limewire or whatever you've got, and smile while watching what's supposed to be this season's blockbuster. Smile because you enjoy the movie, and because you get to piss all over Pullman's profits.

Jack Thompson is a bigot.

This is bigger than Tommy Hilfiger's anti-black and Asian sentiments (which never happened, thanks, Snopes). It's more concrete than George Bush not caring about black people.

http://gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5883

Jack Thompson is a closet bigot. We already knew he had strange Tourette's-like moments where he throws ad hominem insults at his opponents (thank you, Wikipedia contributers). And we already know about his stereotypes, labelling gamers as drug addicts and void of ideas, and implying homosexuality and mental deficiency to tarnish his opponents' arguments and reputations (regardless of its effectiveness). He's been known to initiate contact with a potential opponent, provoke them (often without effect), and then threaten legal retaliation upon response. He exposes himself to media readily to make his claims, then hides away when it's convenient, heaven forbid they might expose him for his outright lies claimed as "fact", claiming the media is responsible for the downfall of society.

That said, which doesn't begin to describe Jack Thompson, I have to add my own say based on his Modest Video Game Proposal, a disgusting proposal by a disgusting gold-digging man based on his disgusting views of the world as a whole. I'll skip all his lies and deception from the beginning and get right to the proposal.

Osaki Kim. Ahhhh, this is where you show your true colors, Jack-ass. I know quite a few Japanese names, and though I don't claim to be an expert, I'm pretty sure Osaki isn't a valid Japanese name, as much as it carries that "Japanesey" sound, and much less a Korean name. And in my own experience with the last name Kim, it's almost a strictly Korean surname, and almost definitely not existent anywhere east of Western Europe as a non-Korean name. Is this a blatant attempt to minimalize multiple cultures into one big Chinkville, or is he really just that ignorant? Let's go on.

Osaki Kim is henceforth referred to as O.K. (by Jacky-boy, not me). OK? As in, "USA, A-OK!"? Forgive me if I read too much into this, but even screenplays tend to give more respect to fictional characters than mere initials. Articles will use the entire last name. But I don't think it's a mistake that even the initials sound "Oriental". But then this character goes on to say, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." Isn't that perfect? A perfectly stereotypical cinematic Engrish run-on sentence by the hero, Jet Li... oops, I mean O.K.

Other than the Asian stereotypes, I'd say this proposal is probably exactly what he wants to see: corporate heads of media, game developers, managers of retail outlets, allll being punished... and himself making huge profits off the lawsuits that punish them. On a side note, I find it funny that his rampage includes the slaughter of the lawyers defending the game company. It almost confuses me. I think it's grounds for psychoanalyzation. It'll be great to see Jack jailed for criminal insanity... or just institutionalized for insanity.

And here, I hope that good ol' Jack-hole will actually read this. I kinda envy Scott and Gabe. Messing around with stupid people who think they're better than you has gotta provide some sort of amusement.

an anonymous letter to Reader's Digest

Robert F Howe's article "Deadly Games" in the August 2005 issue of RD caught my attention, but at just over halfway through, I couldn't bear to read anymore. I don't know Mr. Howe's credentials, but this article was a severe display of ignorance on his part, and it showed an incredible lack of research and an overbearing sense of bias.

Grand Theft Auto, in all its incarnations, has always been strictly labeled, marketed, and sold strictly to mature audiences. I won't go into the fact that GTA has no aspect of gun-firing simulation and is therefore unable to "train" children to fire upon authority figures; nor will I stress that there are severe in-game consequences for senseless acts of violence and that the San Andreas incarnation is a story about rising against the evils and corruption already present in society.

There is nothing to gain from these suits against Rockstar and similar game companies other than to fill greedy lawyers' pockets. Jack Thompson is notorious for his blind crusade against the media, and his inclusion in the article is an utter joke that detracts from the persuasiveness, if that is the article's intention.

Here are some online resources about Mr. Thompson to debunk his battle for so-called family values, and hopefully these will also contain enough references to balance the horribly skewed perception of video games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(attorney)
http://www.vgcats.com/jack.php
http://croqaudile.com/?article_id=10299