From: Michael Stutz <stutz@dsl.org>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 01:48:49 +0800
To: Alan <alano@teleport.com>
Subject: Re: The McVeigh Video Game
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.970617100717.13050C-100000@linda.teleport.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.94.970617131913.760F-100000@seka.nacs.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Alan wrote:

> I am expecting Tim McVeigh to show up in a video game any day now.  Check
> out some of the games at the local arcade.  See who the villians in the
> "shoot-em-up" games are...  Used to be "drug dealers".  Now it is
> "terrorists".  And you get to be the one to "blow the badguys away".

Read a similar theme last night in James Kunstler's New Urbanist manifesto,
_The Geography of Nowhere_. He talks of the currently-ruling corporate
society's romanticism of the past in a discussion of the psychological
techniques used on parents and children in the Disney theme parks. Actors
guised as pirates, cowboys or brigands all stage "shoot-em-ups" to the
entertainment of middle-class families; he wonders if, in 100 years hence,
the status quo families of the age will watch reinactments of black gangsta
youth and their drive-by shootings.