galfridus

This harkens back to the post yesterday about Eric Schmidt telling geeks to get off their pasty white asses and get involved in the political process.

Listen: You might not play videogames or even give two shits about them, but this is still related. Until DC has a grasp (and the EFF beating their heads in about it doesn’t mean they grasp it, though the EFF is a damn good thing and I am not belittling them in any way, shape, or form) on what IT means, they will always listen to knee-jerk ambulence chasers and media whores like Jack Thompson and their right-wing schtick.

As a 33-year-old who does play games like Nintendogs and is pre-ordering a Nintendo Wii but will turn around and, yes, kill a hooker after the the character in Grand Theft Auto has sex with her… I just have this to say:

Those who are responsible with IT (and videogames fall in this realm) must stand up and hlep guide those who don’t get it. Jack Thompson doesn’t get it, but I don’t think he’s a complete boob either. However, he helps fuel people who are complete boobs (let’s not forget the twit from my home state of Texas who wants Farenheit 451, a book about banning books, banned from the curriculum in his kid’s school — he’s one of those “complete boobs” I’m referring to), and that’s where the danger is at.

I bet Ted Stevens knows who Jack Thompson is, but he doesn’t know that the Internet is not a series of tubes. Hillary Clinton knows who Jack Thompson is, but I do not see her doing anything other than pandering to the supposed “values voters” out there. Joe Liberman had his ass rightfully handed to him in the Democratic primary because he just doesn’t care to inform himself of what the actual state of events is. Hell, I like one of my senators, Debbie Stabenow, and she even signed on to the silly copyright bills that keep floating around DC.

That is simply because no one has managed to educate these people. It falls to us in the IT community to do so.