Games - Jack Thompson

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John Bruce "Jack" Thompson (born July 25, 1951) is a Coral Gables, Florida-based American attorney and activist against obscenity and violence in media and entertainment. Thompson describes himself as a Christian conservative and a Republican.

After an initial foray into politics, Thompson concentrated his efforts on activism against obscenity in rap music. More recently he has focused on violence as well, particularly in the content of computer and video games and their effect on children. This includes lobbying for legislation restricting distribution of these games and filing lawsuits on behalf of the victims of crimes committed by juveniles allegedly inspired by violent video games.

Campaign against Janet Reno

Thompson grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Denison University. He went to law school at Vanderbilt University, where he met his wife, Patricia.

Thompson and his wife moved to Florida in 1976, where he worked as a lawyer and then a fundraiser for a Christian ministry, while she practiced corporate law. Thompson also sued the station that aired Rogers for violating a December 1987 agreement to end on-air harassment against him. Thompson had complained to the station after Rogers solicited homosexuals to join him on his vacation; Rogers aired Thompson's address and phone number. Thompson claimed one of the terms of his agreement with the station was that it would pay him $5,000 each time his name was mentioned. For the next eight months he recorded all of Rogers' broadcasts and documented 40,000 mentionings of his name, so he asked for $200 million in the suit.

Thompson's campaign for prosecutor was reportedly also prompted by rumors that Reno was lesbian. He gave Reno a letter at a campaign event requesting that she check a box to indicate whether she was homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. Thompson said that Reno then put her hand on his shoulder and responded, "I'm only interested in virile men. That's why I'm not attracted to you." He filed a police report accusing Reno of battery for touching him, so she asked Florida governor Bob Martinez to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate. The special prosecutor rejected the charge and concluded that Thompson did it as "a political ploy." Reno was ultimately re-elected with 69% of the vote. Thompson repeated allegations that Reno was lesbian when she was nominated as U.S. Attorney General, leading one of her supporters, lieutenant governor Buddy MacKay, to dismiss him as a "kook".

Rap music

Thompson came to national prominence in the controversy over 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be album. On January 1, 1990, he wrote to Martinez and Reno asking them to investigate whether the album violated state obscenity laws. Although the state prosecutor declined to proceed with an investigation, Thompson pushed local officials in various parts of the state to block sales of the album, along with N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton. In his campaign, Thompson cast himself as a Batman-like character, a solitary figure helping law enforcement when it was unable to protect the public on its own. He portrayed 2 Live Crew frontman Luther Campbell not as Luke Skyywalker (his stage name), but as the Joker "peddling obscenity to children".

As the debate continued, Thompson wrote, "An industry that says a line cannot be drawn will be drawn and quartered". He said of his campaign, "I won't stop till I get the head of a record company or record chain in jail. Only then will they stop trafficking in obscenity." Bob Guccione Jr., founder of Spin magazine, responded by calling Thompson "a sort of latter-day Don Quixote, as equally at odds with his times as that mythical character was," and argued that his campaign was achieving "two things... : pissing everybody off and compounding his own celebrity". Thompson responded by noting, "Law enforcement and I put 2 Live Crew's career back into the toilet where it began."

Thompson wrote another letter in 1991, this time to Minnesota attorney general Hubert H. Humphrey III, complaining about the N.W.A album Efil4zaggin. Humphrey warned locally-based Musicland that sales of the album might violate state law against distribution of sexually explicit material harmful to minors. Humphrey also referred the matter to the Minneapolis city attorney, who concluded that some of the songs might fit the legal definition if issued as singles, but that sales of the album as a whole were not prosecutable. Thompson also initiated a similar campaign in Boston. Later, Thompson would criticize the Republican Party for inviting N.W.A member and party donor Eric "Eazy-E" Wright to an exclusive function.

In 1992, Thompson was hired by the Freedom Alliance, a right-wing patriot group founded by Oliver North. By this time, Thompson was looking to have Time Warner, then being criticized for promoting the Ice-T song "Cop Killer", prosecuted for federal and state crimes such as sedition, incitement to riot, and "advocating overthrow of government" by distributing material that advocated killing police officers.

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