So… I think about why on Earth people continue to pay attention to Jack Thompson, and the thing that I can’t get past is that it all makes perfect sense, when you think about the current state of the media. You have people like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, who spout demostrably false, hateful, bigoted, racist, borderline insane garbage, and they’re called on again and again to comment, in the mainstream media, on the state of world affairs.

For some reason, people seem to care what they think. Now, I don’t understand why anyone would give a second of airtime to people like that. But there it is, again and again. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson remain on the air, to spout their inane nonsense about how it’s the fault of the gays and atheists that 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina happened. Yet, even after *showing* is that they’re completely devoid of even the most marginal intellectual competance, people continue to listen to them as though they have something worthwhile to say.

So, Jack Thompson fits right in with the crowd. Here, you have someone who I’d genuinely consider psychotic, who has little to no grasp on what he’s talking about (he believes, for instance, that the “Hot Coffee” mod for GTA is easily accessed by anyone, and that it’s not hidden away at all). But, because he speaks in crazy hyperbole, the national media continues to pay attention to him. My question is why do we keep letting this happen?

We don’t let members of the KKK talk about their philosophy in the mainstream media, becuase it’s clear that these people are so monstrously bigoted and ignorant that they have no place in rational discourse. Can we just agree that Jack Thompson is so bigoted and ignorant that he *also* has no place in rational discourse? Can we remind the mainstream media that he is a liar? Can we remind them that he fundamentally has *no grasp* over what he claims expertise in?

I suppose not, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.