Despite the mainstream media's tendency to scapegoat video games as a cause of senseless violence, we should remember that not all mainstream talking heads feel the same way about our hobby.Take Rush Limbaugh, who on his radio show yesterday took calls theorizing on the motivation behind the recent Virgina Tech killings. One caller, Mark from Centreville, Va., tried to lay the blame at gaming's doorstep. "I will guarantee you, I'll bet my last dollar in my pocket, that this shooter will be found to have been a compulsive video gamer," he said.
Rush was quick to jump in, pointing out that even if the shooter played games, "not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There's more to this than that." Limbaugh granted that playing games "may desensitize people, but it doesn't turn everybody into mass murderers."
Limbaugh later went on to compare video game censorship to gun control. "How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns? If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this. You have here a sick individual, an evil individual who committed a random act. But if you want to start blaming the video games, this guy was this or that, well, then you've gotta maybe talk about banning them because that's the same tack that's taken with guns. You got one guy who used a gun, that's it."
So remember, the next time you're griping about mainstream media coverage of games, that said coverage is not a monolithic force with only one point of view.
[Thanks Jonathan]
