At first glance, Jack Thompson doesn’t seem like that bad of a guy. A graduate of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, he worked as a medical malpractice lawyer in Miami, Florida.

More recently, John B. “Jack” Thompson has dedicated himself to improving regulation of videogame sales, fighting to prevent minors from purchasing ultra-violent titles. He is currently involved in a lawsuit, seeking compensation for the families of two police officers and a police dispatcher who were murdered when a boy who is being processed at an Alabama police station grabbed an officer’s sidearm and shot each of them in the head.

Thompson is seeking compensation not only from the murderer, but from the developers, publishers, and distributors of the videogame Grand Theft Auto (GTA), where the player can go on murderous armed rampages through crowded cities. Thompson believes the murderer used this game to train to kill cops.

But why is it that organizations that seek the same goals, such as the National Institute of Media and the Family (NIMF), ask Thompson not to mention them in his crusade?

The answer is simple: Thompson is bat-shit insane. He’s this week’s overzealous, over-publicized douche bag waving a bible around and blowing an issue out of proportion in order to hide the fact that all he’s really after are the millions of dollars in legal fees and a feeling of self-righteousness.

In hundreds of letters and press releases, Thompson has single-handedly created a campaign to bring down the videogame industry. He’s started to call all videogames “murder simulators” or “sex simulators,” despite the content of a given game. He’s referred to gamers as “pixelantes,” “sociopaths with mouses,” and “pimple-faced geeks who use death threats to drive people of faith and with values from the public square.”

Thompson even attacked the nation of Japan for making the systems videogames are played on, calling the imports a poisoning of our culture with pornography and even “a slow-motion version of Pearl Harbor.” It’s sort of like blaming car manufacturers for not stopping drunk drivers.

Thompson’s most recent stunt was making “A Modest Proposal” to the game industry, stealing a cue from Jonathon Swift and his essay about solving the Irish potato famine by eating babies.

Jack offered up $10,000 to charity if a developer would produce and distribute a game where a vengeful father murders the employees of videogame companies responsible for his son’s murder, as well as their families, lawyers, customers, and numerous police officers. Meant to expose the hypocrisy of the industry, Thompson didn’t believe anyone would actually make the game.

But someone did. An independent game organization created a version of GTA called Defamation of Character: A Jack Thompson Murder Simulator, with Thompson himself programmed in as the father. As many people expected, Thompson waffled. He claimed the proposal was satire—a concept he said was too complex for the community to comprehend.

Retribution came in the form of Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, founders of penny-arcade.com, a hugely successful comic and game review website. They fulfilled Jack’s promise for him and donated the $10,000 to charity in Jack’s name. Thompson cried extortion and harassment, but the authorities don’t seem to think charitable donations count as harassment.

In response, I’d like to make a “Modest Proposal” of my own: stop publicizing the rantings and insults of an off-his-rocker Florida lawyer using a bible and a cause to mask his own self-serving ambitions. Don’t point a camera at him. Don’t listen to what he says. If I don’t see Jack Thompson on the news for one week, I’ll slip the Salvation Army $10. Maybe if the Florida Bar Association realizes he’s a crackpot and takes away his license I’ll drop a few singles in with it.

- Andrew Godshalk

Supervising Editor

P.S. The nerdy kid isn’t dead.

P.P.S. I stole page 8, bitches!!