Is Jack Chick doing oppo research on Colleen Lachowicz?

by · October 7, 2012

Nob Akimoto

Nob Akimoto is a policy analyst and part-time dungeon master. When not talking endlessly about matters of public policy, he is a dungeon master on the NWN World of Avlis

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67 Responses

  1. Tod Kelly says:
    October 7, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    Did you have a free weekend or something? Man, you’re making us all look lazy.Report

  2. Burt Likko says:
    October 7, 2012 at 8:00 pm

    Everyone in Maine who is unable to distinguish between a video game and reality is sure to vote for Tom Martin now. He ought to be proud of their support.Report

    • Nob Akimoto in reply to Burt Likko says:
      October 7, 2012 at 8:03 pm

      …given that the party puts people like this on the House SCIENCE committee, I’m not sure if it’d be surprising that Tom Martin would welcome support by people unable to distinguish between a game and reality.Report

      • Kim in reply to Nob Akimoto says:
        October 8, 2012 at 9:32 am

        This is why we do not vote for Republicans. Not because of their barbarism, their inability to understand their own ideas — or think them through, not because their policies would hurt the people who vote for them.
        But because they would choke off what makes America great –science itself.

        America’s never had the world’s greatest engineers — full title there goes to Japan and Germany.
        What we do well is science.Report

  3. Will Truman says:
    October 7, 2012 at 8:01 pm

    I’d only seen some headlines on the subject. I had actually assumed that this was a part of the US Senate campaign up there, wherein the Maine Republicans were trying to boost the Democrat in order to draw votes away from Angus King. It didn’t even occur to me that this was considered a legitimate avenue of attack (and I’ve lived in red states for most of my life).

    Ya learn something new every day.Report

  4. Jaybird says:
    October 7, 2012 at 8:01 pm

    Maybe if we had paid attention to that “non-troversy”, we would have had a better ending for Mass Effect 3.Report

  5. NewDealer says:
    October 7, 2012 at 8:17 pm

    Some thoughts and theories:

    1. Yes, tens of millions of people play games including some people who are older than Generation X (Let’s just say that this is the firs true video game generation). However, this means that tens of million of people do not play video games.

    2. How many of these non-players only have very hazy notions of advancement of videogames? How many just remember their children or grandchildren playing 8-bit Mario Brothers and nothing beyond. This is probably the general demographic of cable news.

    3. One thing that I have discovered but it is probably hard to quantify is the extent that Christian Fundamentalists seem to have developed their own shadow culture. It roughly mimics pop culture in terms of genre and feel but the stories are all Christian. This is a culture that can produce hits and best-sellers that we have never heard about. There are a few crossovers every now and then like the Narnia books or something that is so big that it cannot be ignored like the Left Behind series. However, most of it is not known to us. I wonder how many people grow up in this shadow culture and are generally aware of the wider world but very hazy on the specifics. After all, there are people who still take Chic tracks on face value.

    In short, I can think of a group who is attack is aimed at. Perhaps these people would not have voted Democratic anyway but maybe they are more likely to come out and vote for Tom Martin. This is just my hunch.

    4. That being said, I think concern about violent video games is goes across both parties. The violent video game law that the Supreme Court struck down last term was written by a state Senator from San Francisco. His training is in child psychology. Now this was not a law that attempted to mock people for playing video games but did seek to give extra-aid to parents in making sure that their kids did not get their hands on violent video games.Report

    • Tom Van Dyke in reply to NewDealer says:
      October 7, 2012 at 10:06 pm

      No Joke: Entire Cities in World of Warcraft Dead, Hack Suspected

      http://paritynews.com/web-news/item/403-entries-cities-in-world-of-warcraft-dead-hack-suspectedReport

      • Morat20 in reply to Tom Van Dyke says:
        October 9, 2012 at 12:12 pm

        The DoT disease that was..maneuvered…out of a raid boss was better. It was interesting enough data that actual scientists took a gander at it.

        Basic story: There is a raid boss — big bad monster at the end of a dungeon designed for 10+ players to tackle at once, in this case 20 to 25 — who had an attack that gave you a disease. It did damage over time (DoT) to anyone infected, and could spread to anyone nearby. The damage was…sizeable.

        In terms of play, everyone (at the time — this was years ago) was max level, had high-end gear — and it wsa designed to make players have to seperate and have healers cure disease and heal them before they died. You died if people kept reinfecting everyone, as healers would run out of power. So it was a disease aimed at top-end players. When you beat the boss (or left the dungeon) you were cured.

        Unless your pet got it. (There were combat pets for one class). You could dismiss your pet, leave, then resummon him. With the contagious disease. One that would kill anyone not max level in a single tick or two.

        Sumone resummoned a pet in the Capital City. It infected players, NPCs, everyone. Most NPCs were too tough and regenerated too quickly to die from it, but they’d infect people passing by. Most of whom weren’t top-level and died quickly.

        It spread just like a real epidemic. Until Blizzard nuked the servers and hot-fixed it out.Report

  6. Glyph says:
    October 7, 2012 at 8:22 pm

    Not so much Jack Chick, but videogames are overdue for their own Fredric Wertham.

    Or maybe we need a PMVGC.Report

    • NewDealer in reply to Glyph says:
      October 7, 2012 at 8:28 pm

      What is interesting about Fredric Wertham was that he was also a crusader against Jim Crow and segregation. He seemed to be sincerely concerned about violence and how it worked on child psychiatry and development. He was almost certainly wrong but I think his heart was in the right place.Report

      • Glyph in reply to NewDealer says:
        October 7, 2012 at 8:45 pm

        Interesting piece on him here: http://art-bin.com/art/awertham.html

        Yeah, his name sort of became synonymous with censorship but I agree, he probably meant well. Some of this stuff was probably not kid-appropriate. I know I have comics on my shelf I don’t want my kids looking at until they are much, much older.Report

        • Kim in reply to Glyph says:
          October 8, 2012 at 9:37 am

          *snerk* Tom and Jerry was a really bad idea. No idea what the censors were thinking. Senseless violence made “fun” is probably not for kids below the age of 8 or so (maybe ten)…
          That said, Japan’s a real peacenik country, and their children’s entertainment features a LOT of violence. It’s just got morals too.Report

    • Kim in reply to Glyph says:
      October 8, 2012 at 9:35 am

      The reason why we don’t see stuff like that is because Americans self-censor games.
      This is a GOOD thing, occasionally.
      Who really wants a party with a child molestor (right out of NAMBLA) AND a child-eater (really!) who constantly argue over who gets the child in the party???Report

  7. Will Truman says:
    October 7, 2012 at 8:30 pm

    Okay, having read the original link, it’s only partially about being a WoW player, per se. Or at least that’s how it comes across to me. As much as anything, it looks like they’re suggesting she is immature (or unintelligent) and lacks worth ethic. The fact that she is in WoW plays into the first, but also her attitude towards the game and the tone of the comments excerpted are… extremely informal. It reminds me a bit of people attacking Sarah Palin for the overall tone of her emails (“This is not how intelligent people communicate” as one person I know put it). Not very senatorish, or even state senatorish.

    If I lived in this district, would any of it make me less inclined to vote for her? Maybe, in an open primary, wherein I have multiple candidates espousing my point of view. In an election where ideology is at stake? I doubt it would have much effect if any.

    Beyond that, she reminds me of a number of people I have on my Facebook feed.Report

  8. One to try says:
    October 7, 2012 at 9:14 pm

    The Dem should just give a press conference of her own…

    “I have it from good sources that my GOP opponent likes to play Monopoly, where he plays as an evil land baron (daa daa DAAAAAHHHHH). He’s also rumored to play Go Fish with his kids, where he TAKES CARDS AWAY FROM HIS CHILDREN (daa daa DAAAAAHHHHH). AND – when he was in high school playing baseball he would STEAL BASES!!! (daa daa DAAAAAHHHHH).Report

  9. Michael Cain says:
    October 7, 2012 at 9:33 pm

    You never know who’s going to love video games. Back around 1998, I was coordinating a batch of technology demos (at the direction of the CEO, in the hallway outside the conference rooms) for a large group of telephone company executives at a retreat. Among the broadband demos we were running was a triangular table with three PCs running multiplayer Doom. We roped one of the senior marketing executives (a woman, as it happens) into playing during a break. I will always remember, at some point much later in the afternoon, her assistant tugging at her sleeve, telling her that she’d already missed one session, and it was important that she be at the next one, and her pushing him away and saying, “One more game… this time I’ll get him.”

    I found out some weeks later that that session had converted her from someone who doubted that there was any future in high-speed data, into someone who believed HSD was critical to the future of the company.Report

  10. Shazbot3 says:
    October 7, 2012 at 9:34 pm

    I refuse to vote for anyone who plays D&D or who collects anything, or who goes to Star Trek conventions (seeing a few episodes is okay, as long as you didn’t like it too much.). All are signs of mental illness and loserdom.

    But being a baseball fan is the essence of virtue.

    Also, being involved in law and finance, especially finance, is evidence of human greatness (all those Wall Street folks are so wonderful and competent in their lives).Report

  11. Sam Wilkinson says:
    October 8, 2012 at 1:27 am

    If you made a list of all the things that candidates believe should disqualify their opponents from holding public office, we’d only be able to elect newborn babies.

    Flipside: newborn babies might not do a worse job.Report

  12. Rufus F. says:
    October 8, 2012 at 12:57 pm

    On the other hand, I’d be okay with disqualifying a candidate who was a grown adult that could get through all of the Harry Potter or Twilight books.Report

  13. Kolohe says:
    October 8, 2012 at 1:04 pm

    “How would you handle Leroy Jenkins?” would be an excellent debate question to elicit leadership style and temperament.Report

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