Friday, February 22, 2013

Glenn Beck: Video-Games Responsible For Sandy Hook Massacre


(Hey, while you're hear, have you watched our new episode yet?)

Y'know, for awhile there I was a little worried that the American right-wing might've been doing something very smart in regards to their relationship with video-games. While it's not a perfect alignment, it's my observation that the worst aspects of gaming culture right now - centered, as these things tend to be, around the multiplayer-shooter genre - line up pretty well with The Right's most poisonous elements: Misogyny, angry-white-man paranoia plus the attendant homophobia plus "Men's Rights" lunacy that goes with it and, of course, worship of (but complete lack of respect for) the gun culture.

So when I saw things like Ollie North pimping "Call of Duty," my worry was: "Oh great, they've figured it out. They'll never regain footing in the rest of the entertainment industry; but gaming having any kind of ideological bent is such a nascent thing that they could easily slip in and claim this medium for their own without much resistance - and the only thing worse than the bro-gamers dominating the market would bro-gamers as a voting bloc."

Fortunately, The Right has demonstrated rather completely that they prize the short-term financial and electoral gains they get from being the obedient lapdogs of the gun industry FAR more than they do their long-term relevance as a political force; and so they've enthusiastically jumped onto the "Guns Don't Kill People, Violent Video-Games Kill People!" bandwagon - anything to prevent gun manufacturers' from losing business. In the latest salvo: Glenn Beck, preaching the "medical facts" of the Great Desensitization Lie:


Well, that was unpleasant. Hey, why not watch some Shameless Self-Promotion to wash your brain out?