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Boycotting the eeeevil Duluth Air Show for peace
James Lileks @ buzz.mn

Some people are upset that the Duluth airshow will include a video game that lets you fight terrorists. From the article:

Some community members are calling for a boycott of the Duluth Air Show because of a combat simulation that U.S. Army recruiters will bring to the show.

The Virtual Army Experience demonstrates what life could be like as a soldier. In one scenario, participants transport aid to threatened humanitarian aid workers while using machine guns and a missile launcher to wipe out terrorists who stand in the way.

That has some calling for a boycott of the air show, which comes to Duluth next week.

"We find it to be unacceptable and inappropriate," said Michele Naar-Obe.

Inappropriate? At an air show? One can understand their anger if the simulation was mandatory, and children were herded into vast rooms, drugged up, forced to ride the Humvee sim then marched into a recruitment office and told they were signing up for a free trip to Disneyland, but that’s not the case.

I wonder if these people would have protested the comic books of the 40s as well. Before the crime and horror comics took over the market, kids’ comics were packed with anti-Nazi fisticuffs; the stands were full of pictures of Major Victory and the Bolt and the Flame and other guys in leotards, often accompanied by a cheerful and presumably emancipated minor named Bucky; they were wading into crowds of gaping fang-toothed fascists, punching and grinning and generally saving Western Civ from militaristic collectivism. Boys like to read about fighting the bad guys.

Somehow a sim about saving relief workers by blowing up terrorists is BAD, but a game in which one plays a criminal who drives around town running over pedestrians is okay.
One suspects the boycotters would also be down with an RPG simulation of the life of Che Guevara, in which you go about summarily executing "counterrevolutionaries" and "bourgeoise oppressors."
I’d say boys are getting mixed messages, but they’re probably not listening to the boycotters on either side.
Posted by: Mike 2008-07-08
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=243697