May 1, 2008 -
Neil Conan, host of NPR's Talk of the Nation gave Jack Thompson the bum's rush during a three-minute appearance that also featured G4TV's Adam Sessler and a guy named Jim from BushLeague.TV.Highlights of Thompson's brief appearance include:
Conan: I understand that you think one of the characters in Grand Theft Auto IV is based on you
Thompson: Well, they go into a lawyer's office and they kill him. I had my house vandalized, by the way, today by gamers. I get calls, death threats all the time by gamers... The real issue here is, though, that there is so much sex and so much graphic sex... I'm working with various law enforcement agencies,hopefully with the result that Take Two corporately and the chairman Strauss Zelnick will be indicted for that because this is way, way over the line...
Sessler: I hope you don't mind if I step in there, Neil. Having played the game I have yet to discover the graphic sex Mr. Thompson is identifying...
Conan: John Thompson... Have you played the game?
Thompson: It just came out and I have a life...
Conan: And which law enforcement agencies are you working with?
Thompson: I'm not gonna tell you.
(GP: this answer seemed to convince Conan to terminate the interview... it's also a question that I have asked Thompson without receiving a satisfactory answer...)
Conan: Alright, well, thanks very much for speaking with us.
Thompson: (chuckle) I'm done?
Conan: You're done.
Thompson: Oh, great. I'll go play the game now.
Conan: Good luck... (click)
UPDATE: To listen to an mp3 of Thompson's 3-minute segment, click here... Or, get the full 16 minutes from NPR's website.
UPDATE 2: Thompson found a more sympathetic ear on Glenn Beck's CNNHL program, which I just caught. Can someone YouTube that? Of course, that nonsense about the military desentizing recruits with video games has been debunked before, but now Beck is parroting it.
Thompson also (again) linked the Red Lake school shooting to GTA and Virginia Tech to Counter-strike.
Comments
ORLY? For a guy who has not played much of the game (he has a life- sending endless emails and faxes is serious business), he has found a lot more than most people.
His claim of working with law enforcement is especially bullshit- just like how his wife is supposedly sick...only when convienient for him.
I said it before, the hookers say stuff like 'I'll suck yer #*&$' and stuff, but... innuendo =/= the actual act.
If innuendo = porn, than anything that airs on TV 7:00 and later is grounds to be banned in JT's eyes.
lol yeah. Thats why its rated M. There are obveously gonna be swears and violence in an M rated game...
but never do you see a girl completely undressed or doing any sexual acts.... this is just stupid how people scapegoat great games like this..
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If people can train to kill and operate expertly, the first time with no prior experience, a gun on GTA then why don't NFL teams save probably thousands of dollars on training camps/equipment and such and just have their players go at it in the latest version of Madden? After all, Madden is far more lifelike than GTA ever could be and if you can train off a game like GTA logically the more real it is the better the training.
It might be a gamer(assuming what he says is the truth, and isn't something overly exaggerated....), but he has lots of people other then gamers that he has ticked off over all these years who could have done it.
For all we know, "vandalized" might have just been some dog or the wind knocking over a trashcan...
@ GP
I find he won’t answer the tough questions - like Conan’s about which law enforcement agencies. I believe that if there was a PD buying his theories he’d be only to glad to announce it.
Obviously, anything that would discredit him he avoids. There have been quite a few times where he avoided some poster's main point, but felt the need to reply and go after them.
Also explains the other "interview" he had, haven't seen it yet, but based on the comments I guess there are a lot of holes and lies Rockstar can hit them back for.
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/2466/motivatorjtgtaivmn9.jpg
You're all welcome!
:D
That said, it was a solid interview overall, though its shortness (twenty minutes or so in total) didn't allow everything to be explored or discussed. In particular, I was disappointed that Conan seemed to find some merit (however little) in MADD's condemnation of drunken driving in the game. He didn't seem to thoroughly understand the view that the difficulty served as a kind of penalty. I was relieved, though, to hear him admit upfront to not having played the game while still having an open mind to discuss its merits, story, characters, etc.
I've said it before Jack and I'll say it again: Back up your shit or go home.
The vandalism, well, I have the strangest feeling that it was something along the lines of his house being TP’d or putting up signs or lawn flamingos on his lawn..."
That's my thought as well. After Thompson claimed that kissing constituted "gay sex" in Bully, it became all too clear that he's willing to exaggerate, to absurd levels, the degree of any given subject.
Sadly, I have to agree with the issue of death threats as well. I'm sure that he's received very few, but it's asinine, dangerous, and damaging to the view of gamers all the same. Fortunately, the only prosecuted case of such an act toward Thompson involved (if I recall) an underage boy who probably didn't have the nerve to harm a fly.
Could've fooled me!
A basket of muffins to anyone who suggests that to the honorable Judge Tunis for use in JT's lawyerectomy... :P
Jack rolls in the mud and slings it at anyone who happens to come by, hoping that they too, will come and roll in the mud in which he dwells.
That said, the 'discussion' was worth listening to simply to hear joke say 'cunnilingus' and 'fellatio'.
I would like to see joke thompson try and play GTA. Put him in front of the game and say 'ok johnny boy, show me the graphic sex'. He would have no fucking idea what to do. It doesn't matter that the game teaches you how to play. jack has no concept of what playing a video game involves. He thinks it is a simulator. The guy is borderline retarded.
"Ugh, I.. have a life".
Poor excuse since we all know he sits at home visiting all our favorite websites, firing one line email responses to gamers, and googling his own name all day.
Don't you mean just *over* the line? (sorry, couldn't resist. :P)
Ok I am done. ;)
So GTA is over the line, but the constant stream of lies and intimidation by thompson isn't? Does he get a special line or something? My god how much more moronic can he get?
Jack actually has an answer to that question. It was posed to him when he said he was disappointed about the Left Behind game, "Have you ever played it?" His answer was something along the lines of, "No, but I don't have to meet Abraham Lincoln to know that he was the sixteenth President of the United States."
GTA IV IS NOT MARKETED TO KIDS !
That is all I have to say on that.
I was glad to hear NPR kick John Bruce off the show early. I love NPR.
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
"I don't have to meet Abraham Lincoln to know that he was the sixteenth president." You do however have to read a US history book. :)
Thanks.
Fuckin' douchebag! :P
HUh? Well? Wheres the lawsuits, wheres the Slander suits, the threats, the demands for retraction!!?
Lets see someone stand the fuck up for this industry. I'm getting sick of this crap!
He is knowingly creating hysteria over virtually nothing, harassing people in writing, disrupting the work environment for quite a few people, openly lying on nationally televised media . . . thats all I can think of at the moment, but I know the list is much larger than that.
Can't someone, who has had to suffer his crap, press charges for at least one of the things he has done?
I know he . . . ummmm . . . went to law school (I am not going to say he is an attorney, since he made a mockery of the courts and is soon to be disbarred) and knows the loopholes, but he must have crossed the line at least once, somewhere.
I'm about sick of it too. The industry really needs to drop it's balls with the defense thing.
@BB
It all falls on the industry to take action. In all of JT's attacks on games he has to have crossed the line at least like, three times the way he carries on, you're dead center on that observation, so all that remains is for the industry to pony up with the legal papers.
I think they're waiting to see if he gets disbarred. I'm guessing they figure if/when that happens, he'll be easier to sue successfully.
Just watch. I'll bet anything if that happens, they'll descend on him like a pack of ravenous wolves! :D
Oh, I just listened to a podcast of him over on Destructoid. Seems Jack's been a busy little beaver today. The host tried to get him to stay on topic, but Jack kept accusing him of cutting him off until he finally got tired of it and left. As always, trying to dominate the discourse and forcing his own brand of morality and warped truth on everyone. I love how he thinks that if the industry and its "apologists" don't listen to him, then the government will step in and that video games really will be banned, which is complete and utter hogwash. While the government has been known to take a "one size fits all" mentality, I seriously doubt they would take that approach to games. There's that pesky little First Amendment he keeps conveniently ignoring as he continues to equate games with tobacco, alcohol and regular porn (which he also has skewed view of).
He says he won't be happy when they come to him and cry "Why didn't we listen to you?" But past words and deeds say otherwise. I just know there's a part of him that would just love to be the one to save us from ourselves.
He also briefly mentioned how he considers games to be a "waste of time." To which I say, "So says you." They said the same thing about comic books too, yet he doesn't bash them, and many people consider reading comic books today to be one of many good reading choices. Proof positive that Jack's a useless old fart.
I just sent an email to Take-Two about my genuine concerns about his mental health. I really am very worried that he may hurt himself and/or others in the near future, and I would not like to wait for that to happen.
I am not saying that I want him arrested, but I would like something to be done before he decides to do something that would cause bodily harm and/or death.
I have taken a fair amount of college psychology courses, and his behavior is making me very uneasy. I really don't like to see people get hurt, even if they bring it upon themselves.
Has anyone else tried voicing this concern to someone of high authority?
Many times he has openly insulted the intelligence and demeanor of our (gaming) community. It may do wonders to have us show genuine compassion, even for those that hate us.
It would be great to demonstrate to the rest of the world the amount of kindness we are capable of showing, especially since jack is constantly trying to tell everyone that we are all "training" (and supposedly have been training for some time now) to be a bunch of blood-mongerers.
Just a thought, and it definately wouldn't hurt.
Shows you that we need more news stations that have gamers ready to rebut JT's comments allot more these days.
Jt brings up 'that there are dozens of cases where GTA and other shooting games have trained kids to kill", and yet how many more hundred and thousands of killers are there who have never seen or touched a video game? I grew up playing Wolfenstein and Oregon Trail (I kicked butt hunting) and I haven't killed anyone. His logic also fails, in that if 9 million GTA4 are sold, he is saying that all 9 million will be killers and yet we all know that is false. If JT wants to be the next Hitler and go and have mass game burnings, where will it stop? Will once all the "violent games" are destroyed, will they move to movies next? How about books? Is the reason there is more crime really because there is more "Violent media" or is it more likely reason, there is just more people on this ever crowding planet and more people that are just "evil" or mentally disturbed.
Overall, that was some very sloppy reporting with logic holes big enough for the Death Star to go in and out of.
Though isn't GTA4 more a reflection of houw society is, specifically organized crime. I'm only at the beginning so far, but I feel like I am watching the Soprannos.
It's remarkably hard to have someone commited involuntarily for any length of time. If your under 18 your parents can force you but Jack has obviously passed that stage. I also imagine that jack doesn't have a current therapist or psychiatrist so the courts would have to get involved. Then there is the fact that the doc a while back gave him a clean bill of mental health, so I really doubt there's anything anyone can do.
Its not due to morals.
Nor to voilence.
Not Sex.
Not even how to treat women.
Its all about money. They are complaining they are not getting their take of the profits. It seems so easy. If any of these idiots REALLY wanted to curb violence, they report on the White House's failure to curb violence in America. Or Congress.
Frankly, there's 100 fold, more sex in most evening programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC....and most ironically, Fox, then all the GTA's combined.
Yep. I'm tempted to wonder if he gave the doctor a BJ.
If it did thats harsh....
actually a slander suit would be near impossible to win right now, for the taketwo to win a slander suit they have to prove that these lies have hurt their profits, and with the amount that GTA4 is selling, that would be near impossible to do, and in the long run probably cost them more money than the small amounts that jack is costing them with his lies, making it poor bussiness sense to take him to court
in the end the suit would actually do more to bolster Jack as when it's thrown out he would make claims that he was "obviously" telling the truth and the judge saw right through take twos slap lawsuit