"He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right."

Said one of Jared Loughner's friends.

For those of you who still want to argue, straining against the evidence, that the terrible political rhetoric pushed Loughner over the line, let me help you. I've studied law for 30 years, and I know how to extract an argument using what little is available.

Ready?

Here goes...

The overheated rhetoric in America was so repugnant that Jared Loughner couldn't bear to engage with it. Alienated and left to his own thoughts, he became mentally disordered, leading to the massacre. If only the political debate had been more gentle and inviting, he might have watched television and listened to the radio, and then his mind would have contained more conventional ideas, precluding the insane, murderous thoughts.

AND: I was just talking with Meade about my (deliberately strained) theory, and he said that a young guy like Loughner would not have been drawn in by more politely stated political commentary. A marginal individual — especially a person with a propensity toward violence — would probably be susceptible to more aggressive, more vivid commentary. What did Loughner consume instead of  politics? Wasn't it violent video games and movies? By contrast, the news — even the commentary pundits decry as vicious — would seem bland and insipid.

We've read that Loughner had a grudge against Gabrielle Giffords because she wouldn't answer the question "What is government if words have no meaning?" He seems to have decided she was stupid and fake. If that was his tendency, toned-down rhetoric wouldn't have been what would reincorporate him into the political community where he might be influenced by others and come to believe more normal things. He seems to have wanted to talk philosophically about what's really true, beneath the surface of things, beyond the platitudes.

Now, I think he was psychotic, in which case, none of this explanation applies, but let's assume you want to work with the idea that he was a marginal citizen who might have been normalized if the community socialized him more appropriately with debate and dialogue. What could have reached him? Probably not some namby-pamby paragon of niceness.

Heretofore "always... afraid of video games," Susan Orlean "felt an urgency rising in me."

Somehow, strangely, Microsoft Kinect brings out the elite scribe's sexual (-sounding) longings.

Emily Dickinson meets...

... Grand Theft Auto.

From the White House official Flickr site...

... here's an interesting new photo:



It's supposed to be symbolic, right? The President, having reached the top of a staircase, encounters a closed door. Seemingly unaware that the door is unbolted, the President stands frozen, statue-like, gazing at a black-and-white photograph of a panel discussion. What does it mean? It looks like a scene in a video game, doesn't it? What will happen if he opens the door?

IN THE COMMENTS: Doug urges us to read the caption, as if the caption answers an interesting question.

President Barack Obama waits to be introduced at a critical infrastructure CEOs meeting on cyber security in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, July 14, 2010.

But to me the interesting question — and I had read the caption when I wrote this post — isn't: What was actually going on when this picture was taken? It's: Why did the White House choose this picture, from the 1000s of pictures taken? There is a message — an image — that this picture was thought to convey. What was that message? Does this picture actual convey that?

"At this moment, 4,547 comments have rained down upon me for that blog entry."

"I'm informed by Wayne Hepner, who turned them into a text file: 'It's more than Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and The Brothers Karamazov.' I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread. Still, they were a good set of comments for the most part. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition."

That's Roger Ebert talking about a blog post of his called "Video games can never be art."

The reason I'm noticing this brouhaha is that, checking my Site Meter, I saw I was getting a ton of traffic from Bing on a search for "roger ebert apologizes." I wanted to know what was stirring people up today, and kind of sorry they were dropping by my blog only to be disappointed to find something I wrote back in October 2008 called "Roger Ebert apologizes for reviewing the first 8 minutes of a movie."

Funnily, Ebert's new post begins:

I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen.

I think my old post does have some relevance: It calls that second sentence into question. I can see a lawyerly way to defend it, but it's pretty weasely.

AND: "I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread" insults the 3 novels doesn't it?

Obama diverts himself and tells us to quit diverting ourselves.

1. "With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," he said today.

2. He's golfing again. He knows how to do that. Is it empowering? Is it emancipating?

Hypocrisy?
	Yes. He'd like to lay down a lot of rules that only apply to other people.
	Yes. He thinks what he likes is worthwhile, but what he doesn't care about seems like a waste.
	No. Golf is outdoor exercise, quite unlike the various high tech screens people fiddle with.
	No. Unlike the people he's scolding,he doesn't need another "tool of empowerment."
pollcode.com free polls

Who could have imagined that one day the Supreme Court would take a case called Schwarzenegger...

... and Schwarzenegger would be arguing for preventing young people from viewing graphic depictions of violence? That day has come.

Don't worry kids. If you can't get your hands on those video games, you can sit quietly on the sofa and watch an old Schwarzenegger movie.

It's a game... between life and death...

Fight post-traumatic stress...

... with Tetris.

[Tetris] employs many of the same areas of the brain - to do with visual processing and coordinating thoughts and actions - that are involved in laying down memories.

"Disrupting those functions by diverting the brain's attention in this crucial six-hour window seems to dampen down the vividness of memory"....

The game that burned your eyeballs and made you question your sanity in the 1980s.

Tetris is 25.

These people don't look like dorks.

But you know very well that you and everyone you know will look like dorks.

Students worried they would have too much fun.

14 to 1, they preferred the real classroom to a virtual classroom in Second Life.

"Okay, so maybe the Baby Shaker iPhone app was a bad idea."

Uh, yeah.

"Nintendo is, well, almost the most fun a kid can have."

(Via Bloggingheads.)

The worst that could happen.