A bit of a follow-up:

I was checking out Gamasutra (a great, informative site for people aspiring to work in video game design and other interactive media), when I came across a small news blurb about the Take Two/GTA:VC/Haitian controversy. In it, it links to this, which they wonder may have been a catalyst in the protests that led to Take Two editing future releases of the game.

That is some really piss poor journalism. It "may be the most graphically violent" game ever? Well, sure, if you've never played games like Castle Wolfenstein or Mortal Kombat. They talk to some guy named John Difenderfer for some authoritative dissection of the game. And he is? As far as I know, he could be a mental patient. He seems to be a "hardcore gamer," which places him in the same ballpark. Racist? It's no more racist than The Sopranos, Goodfellas, or any other mob movie in the last 30 years. True, it trades on stereotypes, mostly for comic purposes, but never to ridicule or "persecute" the people they portray.

Arnold Diaz is the worst kind of hack: he takes a snippet of questionable dialogue, gives it to the director of Haitian Centers Council, and uses the subsequent frothing to vilify a game he has obviously never played. Has context become completely meaningless when it comes to speech? I mean, if I read a quote that contains several instances of the "N Word," are you going to assume right away the person who said it originally was racist? Of course not. Context. Richard Pryor says it: funny. David Duke says it: not so much. So why not apply that same principle here? The dialogue in question comes from "soldiers" in a gang war between the Cubans and the Haitians. You wipe out van loads of Cubans later under direction from a Haitian. Where is the uproar for that? You waste a bunch of French gangsters. Sacre bleu! Again, where is the outcry? For one line of dialogue, completely out of context, this game goes from crass (but entertaining) diversion to racist genocidal propoganda.

Here's something I advocate my readers to do with vigor and aplomb: kill all shoddy journalists!