When Creatives Go Stupid

We keep hearing in the United States how much radical Islam hates our culture and how it's poisoning the world. To some extent, I could see where they were coming from. We've pushed the envelope pretty far sometimes. Some people think that's a good thing, of course. Freedom of expression and all that. But poison? I didn't think so.

But now comes JFK Reloaded and I'm beginning to smell the hemlock. My question is this. Are there such places as creative no-fly-zones? I think there should be. But obviously, not everyone agrees. Art should know no bounds, it's argued. The creative mind must be free to wander at will into every dark and dangerous cranny of the human experience.

A few posts ago, I dismissed people like Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, as little more than Chicken Little, forever seeing marketing and advertising as some kind of evil empire. Some of you disagreed. We deserve the criticism, you said. We do in fact need to take responsibility for our actions, for those actions are a powerful thing.

For the most part, I'm still not convinced. But this stupid foray into what passes for entertainment has me worried. Yes, I know. It's not like it's flying off the shelves at Best Buy. How could it? For now, it's just an internet game and it had its 15 minutes of fame and can we all just move on? Still, it says something about what creative people--and yeah, that goes for us, too-- are capable of when the objective is outrage instead of substance.

Memo to the creators of JFK Reloaded: Creativity is a gift. Not a license to make us sick.