Welcome to Earth, where not everybody is white.

2008-04-12T01:28:00.002-06:00

(Searcy's Note: Click the link above for the article in question, or this post won't really make sense. I wrote this in the comments section of the great site www.alinktothefuture.com, a classy and interesting gaming blog. I thought it would make a good blog rant, so here is what I said in full [with editing for grammar] . Enjoy!)

I personally don’t get why people who decry games like this cannot see their own hypocrisy. They claim to want equality, but in the same breath demand special treatment for a certain group based on race.

If RE 5 were set in the States, we would certainly be gunning down plenty of Caucasians - which wouldn’t surprise anyone. But somehow, in the name of that blasted political correctness, a culture that has an awful history of oppression and enslavement - a fact which no one denies - is suddenly exempt from media representations for which every other culture is fair game. Every time someone makes a black villain in a movie, the producer is a racist. Every time a black person dies instead of a white guy, someone gets offended. I didn’t hear any outcry when we were shooting deranged Spaniards, but suddenly it is so wrong now because the people are black?

Mr. Croal wants us to believe that his problem is not necessarily with the game but with the presentation of the trailer. Well, I have news for him - I’ll bet the game is quite similar. That’s… kind of the point of a trailer. Stop trying to dodge arguments.

I haven’t even got to the part where I go off about the fact that the studio that is making this game is in Japan, with Japanese employees that don’t have politically correct American stereotypes of black-white conflict. I seriously doubt that many of these people have any concept of black vs white racism. The world is bigger than the U.S., people.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; having a problem with the RE series’ history of violent Machiavellism is understandable, even if I disagree. But there is no room for an argument for equality AND special treatment for a group. The two things are polar opposites.

Why do we all insist on seeing color?

Two Dumb Men Board a Whaling Boat, Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of International Diplomacy

2008-01-17T00:13:00.000-07:00

Apparently the cool thing to do now if you are an extreme environmentalist is to physically stop other people from doing things you don't like. I guess a couple of Australian dudes thought it would be a good idea to board a Japanese vessel without permission and attempt to stop the crew from whaling. I'm all for helping the environment, saving the trees, and all that junk, but really, come on. That's not the point of this post anyway.

Because the story gets much better. The Japanese crew, taking offense to the two uninvited guests trying to impede the ship, tied them up and are holding them captive, and have expressed an intent to return them immediately provided the ship they used to board cannot follow theirs anymore.

The activist group, Sea Shepherd, has started throwing around words like 'kidnap' and 'terrorism' . This is complete and utter bullcrap. Those men were uninvited guests on a ship they were trying to stop against the crew's will. That pretty much fits right in with the definition of piracy. Which is a crime in every speck of international water on this planet.

These men shouldn't be released as heroes, they should be tried as pirates and thrown in jail. As for the Japanese whaling crew, well, if someone tries to take a ship over in the middle of the ocean, what is there to do besides tie them up and throw them in a cell?

The unfortunate part is that it looks like the media is going to paint these guys as martyrs. Let me just remind the world at large that petty criminals make poor role models.

Searcy's Take

Welcome to Earth, where not everybody is white.

Two Dumb Men Board a Whaling Boat, Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of International Diplomacy