GTA Hater Gets Owned by Google

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at 7:15 PM May 06, 2008

Letter writer Joshua Nichols points out some selective editing by Strib conservative lightning rod Katherine Kersten in her recent column on Grand Theft Auto IV.

In the column, Kersten writes:

"[T]eenage boys of America," wrote one reviewer, "... you can still kill and maim and plunder and screw until your heart is full," but now "the violence is no longer cartoonish." Thanks to GTA IV's new realism, when G-stringed strippers grind the main character's lap, the player's controller vibrates in response.

But if you run the phrase "can still kill and maim and plunder and screw" through a Google search, you'll find the source material, this Slate column. As you'll see from reading the full quote in context, Kersten used some selective editing to remove portions that were inconvenient to her conservative orthodoxy.

Yes, concerned teenage boys of America, if your parents are irresponsible enough to let you get your hands on this, you can still kill and maim and plunder and screw until your heart is full. But there's a difference this time: The violence is no longer cartoonish. Shoot an innocent bystander, and you see his face contort in agony. He'll clutch at the wound and begin to stagger away, desperately seeking safety. After just scratching the surface of the game—I played for part of a day; it could take 60 hours to complete the whole thing—I felt unnerved. What makes Grand Theft Auto IV so compelling is that, unlike so many video games, it made me reflect on all of the disturbing things I had done.

Cross-posted from CPBlotter