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.
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:
- Baltimore Sun article
- CBS News report
- Big Hollywood article
Nothing like raising the level of civil political discourse in this nation. This can only help, right?
It’s no “House of the Dead: Overkill”, that’s for sure. As far as civility? That ship has sailed.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Well, that and you have to be dead to have a memorial.
– Lieutenant Literal
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?
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.
Misha, did you work on the game?
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/TPZMD1.png
Yes, that was wrong too. She’ll never admit it, though.
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.
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.
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.
I long for the party of Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits and Teddy Roosevelt.
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
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.
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 remember that fellow Arizonians Sen. Goldwater and rocker Alice Cooper recorded at least one PSA on conservation and protecting the environment.
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.
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…'”
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).