The Conservative Fool Of The Day is...Jack Thompson!

According to that fount of knowledge known as Wikipedia, Jack Thompson is a Republican attorney and self-described Christian conservative activist from Coral Gables, Florida. He's best known for gumming up the court system with frivolous lawsuits over "offensive" song lyrics and wants a government ban on "violent" video games.

Early in his career, Thompson led efforts to get the FCC to levy indecency fines against radio stations. When he ran against Janet Reno for Miami-area prosecutor, Thompson tried to get Reno to check a box on a form declaring whether or not she was a lesbian. Reno then told Thompson, "I'm only interested in virile men. That's why I'm not attracted to you." After losing this election, Thompson continued his feud against Reno, accusing a social services organization of which Reno was a board member of placing "homosexual education tapes" in schools.

One of Thompson's most laughed-at crusades was his effort to ban 2 Live Crew's 'As Nasty As They Wanna Be' album. In his letters to prosecutors, he included a photocopy of his own driver's license with a picture of Batman glued over his own photo.

Thompson's later campaigns against video games are just as silly, as he's filed frivolous lawsuits blaming video games for school shootings and other incidents, claiming the games violate RICO. In one Fred Phelps-like shakedown, Thompson demanded $246,000,000 from the maker of Grand Theft Auto III. Even worse than all of this, Thompson - being the big Nazi he is - tried to ban the video game Bully, claiming that it encouraged kids to retaliate against bullies.

So Jack Thompson supports school bullies - which makes him bad enough even without all the other fascist things he's done.

Even more scuzzy than this, Thompson's lobbying caused the Miami-Dade County school system to pass a resolution against the game - making the Miami schools perhaps the first public school system anywhere that's Nazi enough to have a written policy explicitly encouraging bullying.

Thompson also managed to get Howard Stern pulled from the air in Orlando.

Back in 1992, Jack Thompson accused the Florida Bar Association of having a vendetta against him because of his conservative religious beliefs, and he asked a judge to declare the whole organization unconstitutional. Thompson continued his grudge against the Florida Bar Association for years. Last year he sued the association, accusing it of harassing him by investigating the many complaints against him.

Recently the Florida Bar Association has filed to disbar Thompson because of his long history of misconduct that has afflicted numerous parties - especially his defamatory accusations against other lawyers. Thompson grumbled that these complaints against him violate his religious freedom because his activism is motivated by his religion.

I hadn't heard of the Miami schools' pro-bullying policy until this afternoon when I was compiling this entry, and I was so mad when I discovered it that I fumed and couldn't get back to work for hours, and I ended up chipping a tooth. Just goes to show you Jack Thompson is a fucking asshole. He's no more of a friend of the people than the stores he sues for selling "violent" games are. For real populists, Thompson is a false prophet.

Today, Thompson announced he's suing electronics retail chain Best Buy for - get this - allegedly selling M-rated games to minors. If Baste Buy - a store that I'm no fan of - is indeed selling M-rated games to kids, who the hell cares, seeing how arbitrary the rating system is? And why is it any of Jack Thompson's damn business anyway? When the rating system began, it was alleged to be not a government-imposed system at all. But now that the wingnuts are suing to force a store to follow it, that's proof they intended all along for it to be government-mandated.

There ought to be a law - to crack down on ambulance chasers like Jack Thompson by making disbarment mandatory for any lawyer who files a frivolous suit to censor a video game, movie, or music recording. Or Congress should pass a law to ban attorneys from collecting fees when they sue over stuff like this. Hopefully, if the current disbarment effort against Thompson succeeds, the media will stop trotting him out as an "expert" about everything and anything, as they're so fond of doing. Also, he's wasted enough taxpayer dollars by clogging up the court system with his mindless garbage. The funny thing is, his disbarment trial is supposed to be next month - and if he gets disbarred while any of the suits he's filed are pending, those suits automatically go bye-bye. Which will be hilarious!

Apparently, the reason he's going after Best Buy is that Baste Buy's policy on selling games is one of the most restrictive of any major chain, so if he wins this case, other stores are pretty much busted too. But that probably won't happen, because any judge is probably just going to laugh Jack Thompson right out of the courtroom, because he has no case. One obvious reason he's going to lose his case is that he's targeting online game purchases made with a credit card. Because minors can't get credit cards, it's impossible for a minor to buy a game from Worst Buy's website - unless they "borrowed" their parents' card, in which case said minors are going to be in a heap of trouble anyway once their folks receive their credit card bill.

Jack Thompson. Truly a worthless waste of matter.

(Source: http://gamepolitics.com/2007/10/23/jack-thompson-says-he-will-file-best-buy-lawsuit-today)