Grand Theft Lawsuits

Although it's been a year since Grand Theft Auto: Vice City came out, the second lawsuit in as many months may be on the horizon, courtesy of the Haitian and Cuban populations who say that the game singles out their ethnic groups and may have "incited [note the past tense!] hate crimes." The news article, which erroneously calls the game Grand Theft Auto III at some point (which shows how educated these people are about the game itself, when they can't even get their hyperbole remotely correct), also quotes a Cuban source as saying: "They've made money out of the blood and tears of a whole nation."

You know what's amazing? Recall a game called "Ethnic Cleansing?" No? It was a first-person shooter that came out on Martin Luther King day of this year. Made by Resistance Records, who are responsible for promoting White Supremacist music to all kinds of poor white trash and anyone else who will listen and drop a few bucks. In it, hook-nosed Jews try to steal your money and you blow them away. Blacks, who resemble gorillas more than human beings, say a few stereotypical "black" things. And the entire point of the game is to walk around and shoot these "lesser" human beings.

As one review put it, "I'll guarantee you'll not find any other game out there that will satisfy your urge to blow away some Mexicans, Hebes, and Simian-Americans after a bad day in multi-cultural la-la-land." The same reviewer tried the game because "Of course we know the Anti-Defamation League is upset, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is upset - heck, anything with a yarmulke is upset. Reason enough for me to order a copy and give it a try." Note that the coward didn't even have the balls to attach his name to the review.

So riddle me this: why is it that these groups are going after Vice City for fictional reasons (the object of the game is not to kill Haitians and Cubans, or to wrest control of the city from either: anyone who has actually played the game knows that you work for both groups at one point), but they don't attempt to sue Resistance Records for making a game designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to "satisfy your urge to blow away some Mexicans, Hebes, and Simian-Americans after a bad day in multi-cultural la-la-land."

I'm sure money is not a motivating factor here, since Rockstar made lots and Resistance made little. No, not at all.

If you're done being revulsed at the hypocrisy from these specimens of leftist idiocy (this is why I don't like to call myself a liberal, folks), then go be revulsed at some of the specimens of right-wing idiocy who play games like Ethnic Cleansing. Then, go home and pop in Vice City and play a real game, for all the right reasons. And hope that clucking protectors of morality, who end up chasing money like a Republican making a campaign speech to a Southern church, end up in the same hot place.

That was why I liked Morris Dees, the civil rights attorney who spoke at Drury. He may have made more money suing Rockstar Games for some imagined infraction, but instead he bankrupted a white supremacist militia - in short, he did the right thing. These groups - money grubbing assholes.