Er... Happy Holidays! Sorry for the lack of blogging. Anyway, the controversy over the videogame Grand Theft Auto: Vice City continues to have legs. Pointing to an in-game mission in which the player is encouraged to kill off the members of a Haitian drug cartel by the statement "Kill the Haitians," a Haitian-American group is requesting damages and claiming that the game should be removed from store shelves. Now the case is moving to federal court. This is an important First Amendment moment for the entire gaming industry.
Meanwhile, the whole thing continues to provide fodder for lazy journalists looking for some pre-fab outrage, such as those at the New York Post who claim that the mere existence of GTA:VC is "10,000 times worse than anything anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy." Not to feed the trolls, but has this guy even seen a movie in the last twenty years?