Bravo, Bob Molinaro - you're a damn idiot

[Kodylan]

I'm sure some of you saw or read about the tragic career-ending injury to Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett this past weekend. Today, on the other hand, we have a tragedy of another type; journalism. Bob Molinaro of The Virginian Pilot wrote an article on Everett's injury, and made some of the stupidest claims I've ever seen made in an article. He's actually claiming that violent video games desensitize people to real-life injuries, similar to Kevin Everett's.

I'm dumbfounded, to be honest. I'll just quote some of the article and link you to the entire piece, because I can't compose the words to comment on this any further due to being left in complete disarray at his ignorance.

I IMAGINE THERE'S a large segment of NFL fans that envisions pro football to be the embodiment of the video games they love to play.

Perhaps most of the NFL's popularity can be attributed to the interests of gamblers and fantasy fanatics. But I've got a feeling that a certain percentage of males, those whose senses have been bombarded by video violence all their lives, are attracted to pro football by the slickly edited TV images that are a variation of their virtual-reality experiences.

This makes me wonder if the catastrophic injury to Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett will make any real impression on the desensitized adolescents and adults raised with the cartoon violence of "Madden '08" or "NFL Blitz," or the absurd blood-and-guts scenarios associated with other Xbox games.

And the rest of the article, for those interested: ARTICLE: Video-game generation may be desensitized to NFL injuries (The Virginian-Pilot - HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com)

[cdyhybrid]

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[kedwyn]

If anything desensitizes us to violence its watching the fucking news everyday. Talk about some depressing violent shit there. Unlike a video games its fucking real.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

How about the fact that this stuff happens in the NFL every other year? Also if you didn't have to see it, didn't watch the game live, it lessens the impact. If this had been on MNF or SNF most people would have felt bad. Sad, but true.

[Dis]

I was going to send the guy an email, but then I realized I was going to only encourage poor journalism due to affirmation of me reading his article. IMO ignore him and he will continue to write for the small time Virginia newspaper. He is a god damn idiot, plain and simple.

Edit: I just linked him this thread instead, let the games begin...

[Angerz]

Originally Posted by Nebuchadnezzar

How about the fact that this stuff happens in the NFL every other year? Also if you didn't have to see it, didn't watch the game live, it lessens the impact. If this had been on MNF or SNF most people would have felt bad. Sad, but true.

Watching him kinda twitch on the ground while watching it live was a bit disturbing.

I dont really understand the point of the article though. Its not like someone came up and dropped an elbow on him after the play was over and the crowd cheered like it was fucking Blitz or anything.

[Goltana_R-Zek]

Guy tries to make himself look good by spouting rhetoric Jack Thompson would approve of, maybe he can bandwagon behind Hilary too and try to get some readers to his column! Honestly, fuckin retarded article.. if I saw it happen live, it would've been a lot worse - but I was watching another game. Unfortunately, as is the nature of a sport like this, injuries occur, sometimes severely.. you have to move on and pray for the best for him and his family. No offense but the world doesn't stop just for this moment, as nice as it would be for that to happen. I hope Bob can IMAGINE himself writing for a good newspaper as a top analyst, but that doesn't make it so either.

[Akileese]

Yeah, we're all fucking desensitized. I mean, that's why whenever a guy goes down 40-80k (depending on stadium/dome size) go dead silent. That place went dead silent when Everett went down. People were horrified.