I got no major opinion on the entire “Roger Ebert’s reaction to Jackass star Ryan Dunn’s death” thing – aside from noting that, whether it was insensitive or not to note at the time, drinking and driving is in fact a bad idea – but I hear that the lunatics at the Westboro Baptist Church are planning to show up at Dunn’s funeral.
:pause:
No, I can’t imagine how that could possibly end badly.
Including video games, apparently.
I agree with the general sentiments in this comic – although my goal is to be an old person who doesn’t despise what the young people create – but being a bit farther along on the Roger Ebert Disappointment Arc than Tycho & Gabe are I can only counsel raising my hands in a resigned shrug. Roger Ebert is finding it not very much fun to be Roger Ebert, these days. It’s not going to get any more fun to be Roger Ebert, either. Considerably less fun, in fact. This unfortunate development flavors everything he writes, at this point.
And, not being Roger Ebert, I will omit my original conclusion. It was accurate, but not very nice.
Moe Lane
PS: On the question of whether video games are art or not: Roger Ebert cheated by refusing to explain his statement that ‘video games can never be art’ until Kellee Santiago reacted to it. I would have first insisted that Ebert establish what he meant by ‘art;’ he’s an art critic, so surely he has a working personal definition – and surely he knows that there’s no generally accepted universal definition. It’s easy to tell somebody that she’s wrong when you can define what’s ‘right’ after her response to you has been presented.
This means, by the way, that I think that Ebert has pretty much deliberately tainted his argument from the start; and I’ve got better things to do than ‘argue’ with people like that. Generally speaking, I mock people like that.
