Today’s evidence that games are mainstream: McCain campaign apology
(Visited 7806 times) Game talk
Aug 202008
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.
Ben Smith’s Blog: Goldfarb keeps experience points – Politico.com.
27 Responses to “Today’s evidence that games are mainstream: McCain campaign apology”
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Boy, he flip-flops and he re-rolls?
/I apologize.
You’ve got to admit at least the response was a little bit humorous.
Humorous? Yes.
Snarky? It definitely reeks of it, doesn’t it?
Jason wrote:
Who cares? McCain is an old man, a Scot, and a former prisoner of war who tricked his captors into assuming the “middle finger” was an American salute — I think he has earned the privilege to be snarky.
McCain wasn’t snarky. His campaign blogger was. That would be this guy, which was the only interesting thing I could find in 1 minute.
I too mistook the quote for being from McCain himself. Perhaps the post needs to be amended because McCain said no such thing; one of his bloggers screwed up and said something stupid.
Michael Chui wrote:
Presidential candidates aren’t just individuals; they’re institutions. You don’t vote for just a single man or woman. You vote for a party. You vote for an administration.
And, hopefully, you vote in the best interests of the people.
What does that have to do with anything? I mean it’s true, but McCain, personally, probably doesn’t even know what D&D *is*. And your defense of the snarkiness was based on the grounds of McCain’s personal achievements, not the actual speaker’s. If we want to talk institution, then you can’t apply McCain’s age, service record, or age, as they become irrelevant when applied to a group as a whole. Only policy matters. A policy of snarkiness, or a policy that permits snarkiness says something about the institution as a whole. Whether it says a good thing or a bad thing is likely going to vary on the listener of course.
But the quote that prompted this retraction was in pretty poor taste though. Actually, I think there were two very ridiculous D&D based caricatures used by Goldfarb at various points. At least two anyway. He does not come across as a particularly mature person.
I highly doubt that the comment was about gamers as a whole. It seems more like a knock on people who pay no attention to real life in lieu of the pursuit of fantasy.
No, Morgan is partly right: The McCain campaign did issue an apology, because Goldfarb was acting on behalf of McCain, and McCain’s choice to appoint the man is part of what we vote for. But my point was Eolirin’s: you can’t use McCain’s personal attributes to defend someone else’s snarkiness.
Yeah, but the point was 1) the comment mattered to people and 2) those people mattered to McCain’s campaign. It wasn’t the crack that Raph posted; it was the apology.
As the link to Ace of Spades HQ says, “Finally. We’re being heard.”
On a lighter note, why hasn’t anyone punned the use of the word “campaign” yet?
I specifically put “McCain CAMPAIGN apology” in the title to try to get that across…
I mostly thought this was funny. I almost snarfed my coffee.
Raph wrote:
I laughed, too! I never saw the “snarkiness” that has some folks above riled up. I thought the quote was, er, cute. If McCain, as an individual, said this, I would vote him for him. No joke. 😉 We need a President who recognizes the need to level up.
Raph,
After I read it I understood but my initial reaction was that it was attributed to McCain himself. I too thought the whole idea was pretty funny considering a reference to D&D in politics is out of the ordinary.
I found it dull, but it’s not easy to make me laugh in the first place, so whatever. Is the funny part the blatantly empty campaign promise? (Because last I checked, your ability scores don’t go up, in D&D. But I haven’t seen the 4e corebooks yet.)
Michael Chui wrote:
Strict adherence to the rules would likely have hindered the development of Neverwinter Nights, Planescape: Torment, etc. That said, I honestly don’t know anything about the actual rules of D&D because, quite frankly, I never cared.
I’d bet that most people are more familiar with D&D in the form of other games.
Geez this is like reading the Boing Boing comment threads.
Okay, so he wasn’t actually talking about D&D; he was talking about an anonymous derivative game. I missed that part.
Continuing to ask for an explanation about this makes me feel like an Obama-ite, so I’m just going to stop without understanding his clever wit. Let us know if he makes another crack about ignorant gamers.
In 3rd Edition, ability scores increased every 4 levels (starting at level 4). /nerd
Don’t make me call Teresa over to disemvowel anyone… 😉
Barack Obama: “Yes we can”
Dungeon Master: “No, you can’t”
I was soooo hoping the US election wouldn’t come to this list.
Now where will I go for a bit of art without the bitter butter?
Heh, I’ve studiously tried to keep the politics out of the blog, in fact! But this item was too amusing to ignore.
Michael Chui wrote:
If you want to be really specific, then: in the first statement, Goldfarb referred to “hard-working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons”, not the game itself; and in the second sentence, he referred to elements often attributed to the game. At no point, at least in the quoted text, was he ever talking about a game. 😉
I hope that you would find the comment funny when you imagine John McCain speaking before the press, committing to increase “the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.”
In an election where the only thing that is evolving is the semiotic kitsch, the only thing related to games is how they are played at scale with lots and lots of money and our real future as the bet on the table.
But now that the left learned the lessons of the tactics of the right, we can expect the echos to last for two generations at least. It’s good for media revenues. It’s bad for everything else. Caveat emptor.
Nice.
I apologize for baiting Morgan. 😛
Michael Chui wrote:
URRRrruuUUrrruuUUU!!