Almost ten years ago Gingrich originally laid the blame for Columbine at the feet of liberals.

July 20, 1999

"I want to say to the elite of this country - the elite news media,the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton, and I accuse you in Kosovo of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don't have the courage to look at the world you have created."

Today Stephanopolous quoted those words back to him, and asked them if he would apply them to Virginia Tech. He said...

Yes.

I think the the fact is, when you look at the amount of violence we have in games that young people play at 7, 8 , 10, 12, 15 years of age, if you look at the dehumanization, if you look at the fact that we refuse to say that we are infact endowed with (sic) our creator, that our rights come from God - if you kill somebody you're committing and act of evil.

First of all, there's a Rating System for Video Games which is intended to give parents the option control over exactly what kind of material their kids are exposed to. If 8-year-old little Johnny is up all night chasing down ho's and blowing up police cars at 3 am playing Grand Theft Auto: Babylon that's a failure of parenting, not "liberalism."

That is of course unless they're too busy playing "LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces" where they act as members of the Tribulation Force intent on either converting or using paramilitary equipment and tactics to kill all non-believers (y'know Catholics and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Gays and stuff) who refuse to accept the teachings of the one and only true JEEZus CHrisT into their hearts and join their brethen in the glory of the Rapture ™ .

The game revolves around New Yorkers who are "left behind" after the rapture. Players scour the streets for converts, training them into a work force to feed, shelter and join a paramilitary resistance against the growing forces of the Antichrist.

Left Behind Games CEO Troy Lyndon, whose company went public in February, says the game’s Christian themes will grab the audience that didn’t mind gore in "The Passion of the Christ." "We’ve thought through how the Christian right and the liberal left will slam us," says Lyndon. "But megachurches are very likely to embrace this game." Though it will be marketed directly to congregations, Forces will also have a secular ad campaign in gaming magazines.

You suspect that was the kind of video game which recognizes we are "endowed by our creator" that Gingrich was talking about?

Now, it might have been fair to note that Kleibold and Harris - the Columbine killers - were hard-core Doom addicts, and that one could make the argument that what they did was essentially create a live action version of that game at their high school - but at the same time you'd have to ignore the fact that despite how popular that game has been over the last 15 years NOBODY ELSE has ever attempting anything so insane or heinous since that time. Well, 'til now.

Similarly, one could argue that they were trying to create a real-life version of the film "The Matrix" - with it's flashy gunplay and big black trench-coats - but that doesn't make such rank speculation neccesarily true either.

Of course at the time people were much too busy incorrectly blaming singer Marilyn Manson (whom Kleibold and Harris didn't like or listen too) to really pay attention to the issues of over-prescribed anti-depressants which seems to have had a marked tendency to promote suicidal and dangerous behavior particularly in young people.

It's odd and interesting that in Gingrich's original statement he tied Columbine to Kosovo, considering the fact that the Republican Congress which had been under his control opposed the efforts of President Clinton to bring that genocidal conflict to an end. From Salon.

 1  |  2  |  3