Howard Stern smarter than Jack Thompson and Dr. Phil?

With his family counseling show, Dr. Phil is the latest media darling to come from no where and invade our group conciousness. Jack Thompson is the attorney loved by Fox news and anti-gaming politicians everywhere for his ludicrous and boisterous attacks on our favorite past-time. Howard Stern is an over the top shock jock widely seen as a pariah by the mainstream media but loved by tens of millions of listeners that tune into his sirius radio show every day.

Now, if you had a serious subject to discuss such as the possible causes of the tragic Virginia Tech massacre, would you trust the judgment of the Attorney, the Family Therapist or the Shock Jock?

I'll take the Shock Jock, thank you very much!

Jack Thompson wrote an open letter to Microsoft founder Bill Gates this week calling for Microsoft to put an end to one of the most popular online video games on the planet, Counterstrike. He blamed the Virginia Tech massacre on Mr. Gates and Microsoft for not shutting down the servers for what Thompson calls a "killing simulator".

Unfortunately for Mr. Thompson, he doesn't understand the industry he would so dearly love to legislate well enough to even know that he wrote his sarcastically toned and poorly reasoned letter to the wrong person. Microsoft only published the Xbox version of Counter-strike back in 2003. Valve Software originally developed Counter-strike and Vivendi Universal handles the publication of the game on the PC, which is the only version that’s played on a large scale these days. So, even if he were right, which I STRONGLY disagree with, Thompson was wasting his ink on a letter to someone who had zero influence on the future of Counter-strike.

Monday night Dr. Phil made the following statement on Larry King Live on CNN about the connection between video games and the VT tragedy:

“The problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me - common sense tells you - that if these people are playing video games where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath, or someone suffering from mental illness, add in a dose of rage, the suggestability is just too high. And we’re going to have to start dealing with that. We’re going to have to start addressing those issues and recognizing that the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.”

Enter the voice of reason, Howard Stern. Wait, Howard Stern as the voice of reason? I know I know, sounds ludicrous, but it's true.

On his sirius radio show this morning, Stern lambasted Dr. Phil for his comments and said, "he's a f***ing ***hole!"

Stern ridiculed the idea that video games could have caused the VT shootings, pointing out that plenty of the world’s greatest tragedies happened in environments devoid of video games, sarcastically suggesting that “Hitler played Donkey Kong” and “Osama Bin Laden played Grand Theft Auto.”

Stern went on to explain why he thinks so lowly of Dr. Phil saying, “You know the reason why Dr. Phil is an ***hole? Because whenever something like this happens he wants to play the blame game.”

Stern commented that he has either played or knows people who play video games “all day and all night” and do not act out violently. He pointed out that blame is always put on “the movies or something” and finished the conversation expressing the sentiment that most gamers have known all along:

“This is so stupid.”

Amen brother, amen!

*Complete transcript of Dr. Phil's appearance on CNN.