Zonder GTA was mijn leven een stuk minder leuk geweest en was ik een totaal ander persoon geweest, maar dat interesseert je natuurlijk helemaal niks. De wereld is er ook beter op geworden en dat kan je hier lezen. Mijn favoriet is dat Jack Thompson niks meer te zeggen heeft.

The Disbarring of Jack Thompson


gtathompson.jpg
I've mentioned how the Grand Theft Auto games have an uncanny ability to outlive their most ardent critics. But one of their staunchest, most devoted enemies had an annoying penchant of lingering far longer than the others: Florida attorney and avowed human parasite, Jack Thompson.

A lot of you probably already know about Thompson's one-man crusade against video games, but before Grand Theft Auto came around, Jack Thompson was one of many clueless idiots masquerading their inherent racism as a war against rap music in the late '80s, and generally trying to blackmail various radio personalities by threatening them with FCC fines. Oh, and he also waged a war against Janet Reno and a local Florida school board for made-up claims that Reno was a "lesbian" and that the school board was issuing "homosexual education tapes." A real class act.

But Thompson's raison d'etre, and also his downfall, came once Grand Theft Auto entered the national stage. As well as, tragically, the murder case involving Devin Moore and the deaths of two cops and a dispatcher. A copy of GTA: Vice City was found in his possession, and boom - like a fly on crap, Jack Thompson was there, implicating both Sony and Take-Two for providing the previously mentally-stable man with the urge to kill.

That motion, suffice to say, did not withstand the scrutiny of our nation's courts. That did not stop Thompson, who continued to tilt at windmills valiantly until, in 2008, the Florida Bar Association officially became fed up with Thompson's insanity, his media-baiting, and his righteous indignation, and banned him from practicing law in the state - also requesting he pay the state around $44 grand for "recovery for the court's time and expense."

Never before in the storied battle between pop-culture and censorship zealots have those zealots been so thoroughly trounced. Thompson's disbarment was like a victory lap for Rockstar, having defeated their most vocal and powerful adversary - and not through extravagant legal fees or courtroom dealings, but simply by the reasoned sanity of the populace.