Jack Thompson is Dangerous

I am hoping that this is the last post on Jack Thompson for a long while.

Updating those who have been sitting under a rock, Jack Thompson sent out a letter to the Seattle Police chief to have the guys behind Penny Arcade arrested. Well, as of today's Penny Arcade post and Gamespot news post (here: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6135979.html), the letter apearently hasn't been recieved by the Seattle Police, if it was sent out at all. There was no fax sent directly to the Seattle Police, just Penny Arcade and a few news outlets.

Now today, Gabe put up a post on "Yack Thompson", which contained this paragraph:

"Jack is not special. He is not a unique snow flake as they say. He is just the latest vocal opponent of whatever is "corrupting" our youth at the moment. When my dad was growing up it was rock and roll devil music. Then it was comic books then movies and rap music. Today it’s videogames. If we were to succeed in getting Jack blacklisted from the major news outlets someone else would simply take his place. Imagine him as an actor playing a part in a play. The point is that Jack Thompson is not important. If he were to be fired a new actor would simply take up the role. The same lines would still be delivered in the same way and the same audience would pay to see it. We are actually fortunate that the current actor is so impotent in his role. Imagine what might happen if some charming, efficacious attorney took his place. The more I consider it the more I think we may be lucky to have Jack playing the part of the alarmist. The alternative might be someone who is actually capable."

This is one of the few posts that I have to disagree with Penny Arcade about. The problem isn't just his cause, but what he does himself.
Thompson is a person who wants to dominate the debate. He doesn't actually want a real debate, he wants a yelling match.
Previously, I have compared Thompson to the likes of Micheal Moore and Ann Coulter. One common tactic is to show up shock value (which considering, isn't difficult since developers/publishers often use the same tactic to sell their games). By doing so, he's at least attempting to dominate the debate not through logic, but through emotional shock.
This isn't the way to have a debate. He also isn't one to just quit, so we very likely won't by de-fault.

The worse problem is by not taking him out of the debate (because of his insane antics), he may actually have some influence. The mainstream audience doesn't know about any of this.
One thing that is still prevalent is the thought that videogames are exclusivly for kids. Anyone who doesn't play videogames do not get that most gamers are adults. But for all they know, Thompson's views just reenforce their views, that violent games are directly targeting children.

We don't need that. We need actual debate. We need to actually show that games don't cause violence, that gamers exist and are going more mainstream every generation. We don't need to sit while a Moore look-a-like is spreading lies and false assumptions. We need to actually stand up and defend our hobby.