DavidKushner.com

ROLLING STONE, November 16, 2006
How Jack Thompson, regular dude and Frank Zappa fan, became the country's scariest crusader against video games.


IF YOU'RE A HARD-CORE VIDEO gamer, you almost definitely hate Jack Thompson. You hate him so much that you might buy an I HATE JACK THOMPSON T-shirt online. You also might play a computer game called Defamation of Character: A Jack Thompson Murder Simulator. For $5.95, you might even buy a roll of toilet paper with Thompson's name printed across the sheets.

Bible-thumping Florida attorney Thompson is one of America's most notorious culture warriors. In the early Nineties, he was the guy who got 2 Live Crew sued for obscenity, got Ice-T's "Cop Killer" yanked from the shelves and battled Howard Stern. These days, he's public enemy number one in the video-game industry.

Thompson is no Jerry Falwell, though: He says "dude." A lot. He TiVos Curb Your Enthusiasm and Da Ali G Show. When you e-mail him good news, he replies with the words "way freaking kewl" typed in cherry-red thirty-six-point font. Even more surprising, despite waging a one-man crusade against the entertainment industry - and enduring countless death threats along the way - the dude's still around. "Sixteen years ago, a reporter told me to enjoy my fifteen minutes of fame," Thompson tells me one afternoon at his Spanish-tiled villa in Coral Gables, Florida, "but here I am now."

In October, his favorite nemesis, Rockstar Games - the bad-boy creators of the Grand Theft Auto franchise - released its latest blockbuster: Bully. Thompson has been licking his lips for months in anticipation. More than a year ago, he blanketed the Net with a screen shot of brawling kids from the game, which, he promised, "will allow teens to practice beating up their virtual classmates." As has been pointed out by Rockstar, the game is actually about a kid defending himself against bullies, but this hasn't swayed him.

In September, three weeks before Bully's release, Thompson spearheaded a $600 million wrongful-death lawsuit against Rockstar, its parent company, Take-Two Interactive Software, and the Sony Corporation. The suit claims that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City inspired a teenager named Cody Posey to kill three people one day in 2004 on the New Mexico ranch of anchorman Sam Donaldson.

"Jack Thompson's a giant walking clitoris," one gamer recently blogged. In fact, John Bruce Thompson is a fifty-five-year-old golf-loving dad who lives on a manicured, palm-lined suburban street. Yes, there are tiny crucifixes on his hand towels, a Merv Griffin Show Netflix DVD under his TV and a Bush magnet on his fridge. But there are also signs of the other Thompson-regular dude: He's unshaven. His beard is wispy. He's in khaki cargo shorts and a faded white polo shirt. He kicks back in a cushy dorm-room-style recliner near a percolating dorm-room aquarium. There's a Sony PSP on his dinner table. And he's waxing rhapsodic about one of his favorite recording artists: Frank Zappa. "I think Zappa was prescient," Thompson says with a fan-boy grin, "and I love his live album at the Fillmore East!"

Like the gamers who vilify him, Thompson grew up as an underdog. A scrawny straight-A student with a debilitating stutter, he was so myopic he would run across the Little League field chasing balls that didn't exist. As a young man, he was a fan of Robert Kennedy, listened to Crosby, Stills and Nash, and hung out with a DJ buddy he wistfully recalls as "a real stoner." It didn't last, though. Thompson flunked the bar exam after attending Vanderbilt law school; feeling like a failure, he attended church service with a friend and later became born again. When he retook the bar exam, he passed. It was a sign, he says, that he should become a crusading attorney. "Within the rules, you try to destroy your opponent," he says, leaning forward in his chair. "It's combat."

"He's made it his life's work to destroy the video-game industry," says Doug Lowenstem, president of the Entertainment Software Association, the Washington, D.C., organization that represents the game industry. "Every time and every place he can, he turns up on the scene to exploit tragedy and get publicity for his agenda." Ironically, companies like Rockstar see their sales of Grand Theft Auto spike from Jacked-up publicity. But Thompson himself doesn't make a penny from his lawsuits. To pay the bills, he represents people being sued for medical malpractice.

As an evening thunderstorm pounds his house, Thompson checks his e-mail. There he finds the usual harangues from gamers. "I get death threats all the time," he says. Periodically, he sends out announcements that he's changing his e-mail address due to "gamer harassment," but, before long, they track him down again.

He doesn't worry so much about himself as he does his fourteen-year-old son, Johnny. Thompson has enlisted Johnny on more than one occasion in his mission. To prove that the local Best Buy was selling Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to kids, he once sent Johnny, then ten, inside the store with fifty dollars in his pocket to buy the game. Thompson crouched outside behind the glass door, videotaping the transaction.

Now Johnny is a gamer himself with a PSP and an Xbox 360. Before going to lacrosse camp this summer, Thompson says, Johnny approached him and said, "Dad, if you don't mind, I don't think I'll tell anyone that I'm your son."

As Thompson tells this tale, his face slackens a little and his words, often gushing, slow. For an awkward moment, he's not the big, bad culture warrior anymore. He's a middle-aged dad in a reclining chair, thinking about his kid being teased.

The moment passes, though, when he's asked how he responds to his son's fear of being hazed for what his father has wrought. Thompson straightens his back and narrows his eyes. "I tell him I'm sorry that he goes through that," he says, "but I'm not sorry for what I've done."