Video game “targets” birthers (revised again)

A new indie video game, Tea Party Zombies Must Die! from StarvingEyes Advergaming, features “Pissed Off Stupid White Trash Redneck Birther Zombie” as one of the lumbering undead conservative characters you get to blow away. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are featured as harpies who swoop down to cause extra damage, and there are commentator zombies from Fox News.

One of the appealing features of the game is the graffiti, things like ObamaCare with a swastika painted on it as well as “Impeach” banners and other familiar Tea Party signage. Between each level the game presents educational progressive criticism of the conservative themes featured in the game. Locales include a trailer park, Koch Industries and Fox News. The Fox News segment had something special for Misha.

Tea Party Zombies Must Die!

I found the game to be a satirically-themed attempt to educate in an entertainment context. I didn’t take the game seriously, finding it more funny than anything else. I certainly didn’t feel any sense of vicariously getting back at conservatives through the game. The gameplay is more blowing away generic zombies with anti-conservative ads between levels. Others may find the concept of taking an Uzi to Glenn Beck abhorrent for any reason and I can respect that reaction. Conservatives are predictably whining about it [YouTube video].

Darin Miller at Andrew Breitbart Presents Big Hollywood, a zombie lore aficionado, wrote:

A zombie invasion would bring America together, not divide us on party lines.

Miller does make one good point when he says:

… let’s contemplate the outrage that reversing this game would bring. What if President Obama and his administration, or any of the liberal leaders in Congress, were the zombies? The outcry (and potentially the government investigation into a company promoting the assassination of the President) would no doubt be huge. This is exactly the kind of disrespectful and intolerant rhetoric that the Left has been urging the Right to stop using.

I personally hate first-person shooters and the gameplay is nothing to write home about.

Update:

The game is no longer online.

Read more:

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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37 Responses to Video game “targets” birthers (revised again)

  1. Lester says:

    Nothing like raising the level of civil political discourse in this nation. This can only help, right?

  2. PaulG says:

    It’s no “House of the Dead: Overkill”, that’s for sure. As far as civility? That ship has sailed.

  3. misha says:

    Lester: Nothing like raising the level of civil political discourse in this nation.

    Ann Coulter: “We Need Somebody To Put Rat Poisoning In Justice Stevens’ Creme Brulee”…
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/01/27/ann-coulter-we-need-someb_n_14588.html

  4. Bran Mak Morn says:

    There should be no defense of this game. We should be better than this; we should not fall for the same mistakes and rhetoric as the tea party itself. If they wanted to make their point, they should have made a game based upon what tea party advocates have said should be done – though of course, the game would still be wrong, at least it would present in a video what the people themselves desire, and so would have educational value. But as it is, this is just as bad as birthers saying non-birthers are sheeple who should be hanged.

  5. misha says:

    PaulG: As far as civility? That ship has sailed.

    Ann Coulter:
    – I might be in favor of national healthcare if it required all Democrats to get their heads examined.
    – I’ve decided to cut out the part of the speech where I say anything nice about Democrats.
    – Ironically, since Obama was elected, for the first time in my life I’m sometimes not proud of my country.
    – Liberal soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax in the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking.
    – We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

  6. misha says:

    Bran Mak Morn: But as it is, this is just as bad as birthers saying non-birthers are sheeple who should be hanged.

    John Hagee:
    – Hagee blamed American economic problems on the fact that the Federal Reserve System is controlled by “a group of Class A stockholders, including the Rothschilds.” In the same series, Hagee further asserted that the Rothschilds, who are Jewish, were part of a wide-ranging conspiracy of “international power brokers based in Europe.”
    – He has blamed the Holocaust on Jews themselves. He has stated that Hitler’s persecution was a “divine plan” to lead Jews to form the modern state of Israel. He calls liberal Jews “poisoned” and “spiritually blind.”
    – In his book Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee claims that Adolf Hitler was born from a lineage of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews.”
    – “It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day… Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of antisemitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come…. it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people.”
    – Hagee interprets a reference in Jeremiah 16:16 to “fishers” and “hunters” as symbols of positive motivation (Herzl and Zionism) and negative motivation (Hitler and Nazism) respectively, both sent by God for the purpose of having Jews return to the land of Israel, even suggesting that the Holocaust was willed by God because most Jews ignored Herzl’s Zionist call.

  7. G says:

    Actually, I went over and tried out the game (as an old fan of the Doom series & zombies). They actually do have educational actual quotes and statements between each level of the game, so they are making their educational point using the FNC & Tea Party rhetoric throughout.

    I understand your point about not sinking to their level, but it is definitely true that the ship of civility sailed long, long ago.

    You can only push some people so long before they lash back.

    I’m not going to cry any tears for the maligned right wingers in this game. They have brought such a backlash upon themselves. Such things are inevitable in the culture of hostility they have engendered. Of course, the trash talking RW folks are just bullies – they can dish it out but then cry foul when someone lashes back at them.

    Bran Mak Morn: There should be no defense of this game. We should be better than this; we should not fall for the same mistakes and rhetoric as the tea party itself. If they wanted to make their point, they should have made a game based upon what tea party advocates have said should be done – though of course, the game would still be wrong, at least it would present in a video what the people themselves desire, and so would have educational value. But as it is, this is just as bad as birthers saying non-birthers are sheeple who should be hanged.

  8. Thrifty says:

    I agree. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

    Bran Mak Morn: There should be no defense of this game. We should be better than this; we should not fall for the same mistakes and rhetoric as the tea party itself. If they wanted to make their point, they should have made a game based upon what tea party advocates have said should be done – though of course, the game would still be wrong, at least it would present in a video what the people themselves desire, and so would have educational value. But as it is, this is just as bad as birthers saying non-birthers are sheeple who should be hanged.

  9. charo says:

    PaulG: As far as civility? That ship has sailed.

    I’m sure Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be totally down with that statement. There are Black members of the tea party and some are leaders of the movement. But I suppose they are used to not having their opinion count.

  10. Daniel says:

    The game is simply wrong.

    That being said, after nearly three years of death threats and threats of physical harm against the President, his family, and anyone even distantly connected with him, threats to overthrow the government, threats to kill any judge who dismisses their cases, and threats of every sort imaginable, birthers don’t have any basis to complain about it.

    They will, however, complain bitterly, since the only rights they care about are their own.

  11. I have a different take on the game. I see it as a work of satire. At least for the birther aspect, I think the zombie metaphor is on target, given that the birthers have been nailed in their coffins so many times that there’s now a nail shortage.

  12. US Citizen says:

    I’ve still not heard any solid platform or ideas from the TP.
    They seem to both embrace the constitution and demand it to be changed.
    They want home education, but then want high paying corporate and tech jobs to flourish in the US.
    They want to close the borders, kill NAFTA and cut off other international partners, but still want WalMart prices and selection.
    On top of all this, they want lower taxes and no subsidies except for their social security and medicare.
    They basically describe a perpetual motion machine.
    And like most people that do so, they ignore the inefficiencies that prohibit it from working in the first place.

  13. Paul Pieniezny says:

    misha: – Hagee blamed American economic problems on the fact that the Federal Reserve System is controlled by “a group of Class A stockholders, including the Rothschilds.” In the same series, Hagee further asserted that the Rothschilds, who are Jewish, were part of a wide-ranging conspiracy of “international power brokers based in Europe.”

    There was a old guy in France who claimed he was Adolf Hitler illegitimate son. Apparently, his mother told him so on her death bed. AH is supposed to have got her pregnant when she was “working” in German occupied Belgium in 1917. Though the only “evidence” is that she lived and worked at a Belgian village whose church AH made a drawing of (with a date on it that is compatible with the date the guy was born) and the fact that the guy got preferential treatment when the Germans returned in 1940, many right-wingers in France believe the claim (popularized by Werner Maser).

    A Belgian historian recently wrote a book describing how he compared male DNA from A a distant relative of Hitler in Austria, B an American cousin’s son of AH (he followed the guy to MacDonalds and picked up a paper napkin the guy had discarded) and C the French pretender (DNA left on postage stamps). He used a reputable Belgian lab, by the way. Surprise, surprise: samples A and B were related, sample C was unrelated to either of the others.

    So, the guy was not Adolf Hitler’s son (though AH may actually have believed it too) and Hitler’s grandfather was not a Jewish gentlemen who got his maid pregnant – though again, AH, may have believed that.

    Link to Story

    (note: the “Evening News” that Mulders works for, is actually the Flemish newspaper “Laatste Nieuws”)

    To Hagee: God seems to move in a mysterious way.

  14. SueDB says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    I have a different take on the game. I see it as a work of satire. At least for the birther aspect, I think the zombie metaphor is on target, given that the birthers have been nailed in their coffins so many times that there’s now a nail shortage.

    It comes down to – “You have to have a sense of humor” Satire many times is a good way to get folks attention. Besides it is an educational game, not all that challenging, but debunking Birfers isn’t all that challenging either.

  15. PaulG says:

    charo: I’m sure Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be totally down with that statement.There are Black members of the tea party and some are leaders of the movement.But I suppose they are used to not having their opinion count.

    I always try to be civil at all times. All I mean by “that ship has sailed” is that if I was to start criticizing people for their lack of civility, I’d be at it all day, and the people who wrote the game would wonder why I started with them and not any of the juicy low hanging (not a death threat) examples the Tea Party has provided. Civiliy is not dead, but it is in a coma and I honestly have no idea what would fix it. MLK might have been able to pull it off, but that’s why there’s a memorial to him on the mall and not me.

  16. HellT says:

    Lester:
    Nothing like raising the level of civil political discourse in this nation.This can only help, right?

    People who treat other people as less than human
    must not be surprised when the bread they have cast
    on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
    — James Baldwin

  17. Majority Will says:

    PaulG: . . . but that’s why there’s a memorial to him on the mall and not me.

    Well, that and you have to be dead to have a memorial.
    – Lieutenant Literal

  18. MaryMitch says:

    Sorry, but satire or not, I don’t like the idea of putting someone’s face on a game character and encouraging people to shoot at it.

  19. misha says:

    MaryMitch:
    Sorry, but satire or not, I don’t like the idea of putting someone’s face on a game character and encouraging people to shoot at it.

    You mean like Palin did?

  20. Thanks for mentioning the educational aspect of the game. I mean, Math Blaster doesn’t express your hate for numbers; it just helps you recognize them, and learn about them.

    During the gameplay, I don’t find the zombies recognizable and it’s not like you’re vicariously smashing conservatives. The focus and interest of the game is the signs and banners you find (right out of a birther or Tea Party rally).

    By the way, the Tea Party Express candidate bus is in Greenville SC today, and based on local news footage, the crowd is thin.

    SueDB: It comes down to – “You have to have a sense of humor” Satire many times is a good way to get folks attention. Besides it is an educational game, not all that challenging, but debunking Birfers isn’t all that challenging either.

  21. MaryMitch says:

    misha: You mean like Palin did?

    Yes, that was wrong too. She’ll never admit it, though.

  22. misha says:

    Dr. Conspiracy: Misha, did you work on the game?

    Yes. Conservatives can dish it out, but squeal like a stuck pig when it is thrown back in their faces.

  23. Daniel says:

    misha: Yes. Conservatives can dish it out, but squeal like a stuck pig when it is thrown back in their faces.

    Some of us can take it quite well, thank you very much.

  24. misha says:

    Daniel: Some of us can take it quite well, thank you very much.

    You’re the only one I’ve found.

  25. Daniel says:

    misha: You’re the only one I’ve found.

    Reasonable conservatives tend to be restrained, often quiet folk. If all you listen for is conservatives making noise, all you’ll find is the loudmouth minority.

  26. Arthur says:

    Daniel: Reasonable conservatives tend to be restrained, often quiet folk. If all you listen for is conservatives making noise, all you’ll find is the loudmouth minority.
    You make a compelling distinction, Daniel. My father was what I would call a reasonable conservative, and he was certainly no ideologue. For example, his time in the CCC during the Depression led him to believe that the federal government had a keen responsibility for the plight of the unemployed. Later in life, he became a relatively well-to-do small business owner. When he turned 70, and the Social Security Admin. informed him he had to begin accepting social security payments, he mailed the checks back with a letter telling them he didn’t need the money and that it should go to people who were worse off than he was.

    When he was drafted during WWII, my father spent much of his time training in the South, where ugly racism later made him a supporter of civil rights reform in the 1960s. His time in the Army also convinced him of the need for universal health care. When the war ended, he was in Germany, and his admiration for the autobahn later made him an advocate for President Eisenhower’s highway building program of the 1950s. As a member of the 14th Armored Division he participated in the liberation of stalags, forced-labor prisons, and several satellites of the Dachau concentration camp. What he saw in those hell-holes made him a life-long opponent of tyrannical government, including the USSR.

    After the war, his participation in the G.I. Bill convinced him that government should play a vital role in supporting higher education in order to advance the economic vitality of the country. He served on our city’s school board, city council, and was president of the country club. We went to church, but religion was never a significant part of his life. The only time I ever heard my father say much about his faith was when he recounted reciting the 23rd psalm during a German attack in the Vosges Mountains during Operation Nordwind

    He was a devoted reader of newspapers and magazines. On weekdays, we received four daily newspapers and two papers on Sundays. In addition, we got weekly copies of U.S. News and World Report, Time, Newsweek, and Life. National Geographic arrived monthly. Every evening we watched the CBS News with Walter Cronkite.

    I don’t remember my father ever wearing sneakers. When he cut the grass he wore Bermuda shorts, old dress shoes, and black, over-the-calf Gold Toe dress socks. He always drove a Cadillac, never went over the speed the limit, kept his car spotless. And he would rather slowly coast to a stop than needlessly wear out a brake pad by apply the brakes unnecessarily.

    He respected traditions, loved formal dances, and disliked rock and roll (but enjoyed the musical “Hair” and most other musicals, too). He was fond of TV. shows like “All in the Family,” “Bonanza,” and “Laugh In.” He enjoyed dry Martinis, perfect Manhattans, and good cigars. He didn’t like rable-rousers, laziness, disrespectful people, or those who shirked responsibility. But his father had died when he was young and he knew what it was to be poor and did what he could to help, and never begrudged paying taxes. He attended both of Richard Nixon’s inaugural balls, but was glad to see the man go when it became clear that Nixon was a cheat and a liar.

    If you’re old enough to remember how President Gerald Ford looked, spoke, and behaved, then you’ve got a pretty good picture of what my father was like. If he was alive today, I think he would dismiss the current crop of Republican front runners as having nothing in common with the secular, humane, intellectual curious, civically and culturally involved reasonable conservationism that he embraced.

  27. G says:

    I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Yes, there are plenty of reasonable conservatives out there – but we rarely hear their voices anymore and too many of them just continue to support the current crop of crazies out of a mere sense of tradition – something which doesn’t help their cause any either.

    The people in charge of the GOP are no longer the traditional conservatives. It is a combination of selfish oligarchs and the neo-conservative crazies which they cynically think they can manipulate to their benefit.

    I think it is past the point where traditional conservatives can even take back their party and those that continue to support it are now just supporting their own suppression and our national deterioration.

    Traditional conservatives need to wake up and realize that if they want a future for their own values, they need to dump the diseased GOP and work towards rebuilding a new sane conservative party. The best thing that could happen for traditional conservatives is for the current crop of crazies to crash and burn and self-immolate sufficiently to be replaced by a new rational option again.

    Arthur: If you’re old enough to remember how President Gerald Ford looked, spoke, and behaved, then you’ve got a pretty good picture of what my father was like. If he was alive today, I think he would dismiss the current crop of Republican front runners as having nothing in common with the secular, humane, intellectual curious, civically and culturally involved reasonable conservationism that he embraced.

  28. misha says:

    G: The best thing that could happen for traditional conservatives is for the current crop of crazies to crash and burn and self-immolate sufficiently to be replaced by a new rational option again.

    I long for the party of Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits and Teddy Roosevelt.

  29. misha says:

    G: The people in charge of the GOP are no longer the traditional conservatives. It is a combination of selfish oligarchs and the neo-conservative crazies which they cynically think they can manipulate to their benefit.

    Here’s crazy: G.O.P. Senators in Albany Block Federal Aid to Fulfill Part of Health Law

    State Senator Gregory R. Ball of Putnam County described his resistance as his duty as a Republican.

    “I would fight very vociferously to make sure that we’re not seen as implementing and expediting Obamacare,”

    Read on:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/nyregion/republican-senators-in-albany-resist-us-aid-for-health-care-law.html

  30. Keith says:

    misha: I long for the party of Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits and Teddy Roosevelt.

    I seem to remember Barry Goldwater reacting to some silly question shortly after his last election campaign with a comment along the lines ‘I really don’t give a sh*t, this is my last term anyway’.

    Unfortunately I can’t remember what the question was, but at the time I thought that was pretty churlish answer, disrespecting his Arizona electorate like that.

    I now have a strong suspicion that it wasn’t the electorate he was disrespecting, but his own party. I think the question must have been about criticism from within his own party and he was just saying that he had had a gut full of them.

    I never liked Goldwater’s politics, but I always respected his opinions, and his intellectual gravitas.Today’s Republicans wouldn’t know gravitas if it bit them in the ass.

    And by the way, Goldwater’s pragmatic environmentalism would have him crucified by today’s scorched earth GOP. He understood that both of the words ‘Conservative’ and ‘Conservation’ come from the same root. His photo journals on the Grand Canyon are really quite good.

  31. Arthur says:

    G:

    Traditional conservatives need to wake up and realize that if they want a future for their own values, they need to dump the diseased GOP and work towards rebuilding a new sane conservative party.The best thing that could happen for traditional conservatives is for the current crop of crazies to crash and burn and self-immolate sufficiently to be replaced by a new rational option again.

    The best book I’ve read on this subject is John Dean’s, “Conservatives Without Conscience” (2006). A persuasive analysis of the political philosophy of those who led President George W. Bush’s election and administration, the book remains useful to understanding many of the GOP contenders for the 2112 election.

  32. Arthur says:

    Keith:
    And by the way, Goldwater’s pragmatic environmentalism would have him crucified by today’s scorched earth GOP. He understood that both of the words Conservative’ and Conservation’ come from the same root. His photo journals on the Grand Canyon are really quite good.

    I remember that fellow Arizonians Sen. Goldwater and rocker Alice Cooper recorded at least one PSA on conservation and protecting the environment.

  33. Keith says:

    Arthur: The best book I’ve read on this subject is John Dean’s, “Conservatives Without Conscience” (2006). A persuasive analysis of the political philosophy of those who led President George W. Bush’s election and administration, the book remains useful to understanding many of the GOP contenders for the 2112 election.

    I don’t think I’ll be around to worry about that, but if some of the contenders for the 2012 election have their way, there won’t be much left for the folks in 2112 to contend for.

  34. Arthur says:

    Not around for the 2112 election?! Come on, Keith–you’ve got to start drinking more fish oil smoothies! (BTW, thanks for pointing out the error in dates.)

  35. Majority Will says:

    Arthur:
    Not around for the 2112 election?!Come on, Keith–you’ve got to start drinking more fish oil smoothies! (BTW, thanks for pointing out the error in dates.)

    “I lie awake, staring out at the bleakness of Megadon. City and sky become one, merging
    into a single plane, a vast sea of unbroken grey. The Twin Moons, just two pale orbs as
    they trace their way across the steely sky. I used to think I had a pretty good life here,
    just plugging into my machine for the day, then watching Templevision or reading a Temple Paper in the evening.

    My friend Jon always said it was nicer here than under the atmospheric domes of the Outer Planets. We have had peace since 2062 when the surviving planets were banded together under The Red Star of the Solar Federation. The less fortunate gave us a few new moons. I believed what I was told. I thought it was a good life. I thought I was happy. Then I found something that changed it all…'”

  36. Arthur says:

    Majority Will: “I lie awake, staring out at the bleakness of Megadon. City and sky become one, merging
    into a single plane, a vast sea of unbroken grey.

    That was an impressive association, Majority Will! Your post reminds me that you can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.

    You won’t believe it, but I’m reading Peart’s “Ghost Rider” right now. He’s a remarkably talented drummer, lyricist, and writer, and in spite of his flirtation with Objectivism, I really admire him (as well as Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson).

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