Friday, August 22, 2008

Screw you John McCain and Michael Goldfarb

As a roleplayer and Veteran, I just have to say I'm thoroughly disgusted with Michael Goldfarb's comments:

"It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement..."
see Dean’s post here

Instead of making baseless attacks to distract the media and the public away from Senator McCain’s horrible record on actually helping Veterans when they need it (like the GI Bill), I suggest that Mr. Goldfarb do a little research before he debases a whole segment of the population that includes active duty service members, veterans and *surprise, surprise* even non-liberals. Using moral panic tactics of the early 1980s and supposed jock vs. geek paradigms shows that the McCain camp has wrong ideas, is drastically misinformed and is clearly out of touch.

Basically the McCain campaign is stating directly that people that play D&D are unpatriotic and in-fact not real americans. This is so stupid it sounds like something Dan Quayle would say. With the election so close, making disparaging comments about anybody seems like a really dumb idea and very petty.



Edit: I liked this point
Goldfarb apologized, displaying a tongue in cheek familiarity with the rules of the game.

If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.

That's the kind of deep, personal animosity that you associate with experience, which clearly Goldfarb has. It’s not hard to imagine that some basement somewhere holds the abandoned d20s, dusty rulebooks, and broken heart of a young Michael Goldfarb who never got to be Dungeon Master because he wouldn’t stop yelling. In fact, it’s hard not to wonder if, when Michael Goldfarb is berating the D&D players of the world, he’s really just berating Michael Goldfarb.
from here

-Swinebread

8 comments:

Randal Graves said...

"We need one more player."
"Aw shit, just Goldfarb is left."
"Fine. We play shorthanded."

"I'll have my revenge on you all. Someday...."

Robert Mackey said...

Amen Brother!

I took my shot at him on Huffington Post a few days ago.

The guy is the sort of person who thinks that since he can't insult people of color, the handicapped or gays, that the only people left to pick on are gamers.

The Moody Minstrel said...

Maybe, by making comments such as these, Goldfarb is trying to show loyalty to Israel.

The Israeli Army officially considers D&D players a security risk because they are "detached from reality and susceptible to influence".

Don Snabulus said...

Golfarb fails sanity check, becomes thrall of Yog'Dorkoroth.

rob! said...

some bigwig from the joint chiefs of staff or something ripped goldfarb a new one, telling a newspaper that he's a gamer, and he doesn't like being smeared like that.

pretty good smackdown.

*sigh* and i used to like john mccain...

Swinebread said...

Randal – That’s exactly what this is about

Robert – Gamers are an easy target because they aren’t clearly defined but to bring this up in a campaign in really strange. They are attempting to make John McCain seem cool by attacking gamers but He isn’t and he never will be.

Moody – heh heh what a great way to get out of military service. In seriousness, with the useful skills developed from roleplaying this is stunning.

Snab – or maybe Douche-thulhu

Rob! – that’s interesting. Do you have a link for that? I didn’t find it when I did a web search.

Dean Wormer said...

I would so pay to see Vin Diesel (a proud RPGer) kick Goldfarb's sorry ass.

Swinebread said...

that would be a lot of fun!