Tyrone Spellman is a jerk.

Actually, "jerk" doesn't quite cover the guy who beat his 17 month old child to death after she accidentally knocked over his Xbox 360. He became so upset by a child too young to realize what she had done that he punched her in the face and literally threw her about the room. I'm probably going to have to spend a few hours coming up with a new insult for this guy, and it's probably going to take a few packs of smokes, a bottle of Mad Dog and a thesaurus full of swears.

Mr. Spellman's trial started recently in Philadelphia and the entire proceeding is the sort of thing that gives Jack Thompson a hard-on. Above and beyond the fact that almost every point actually having to do with gaming is mis-reported on in the courtroom, Mr. Spellman would have been a dangerous sicko whether he was playing GRAW or Hungry, Hungry Hippos. As usual, the media coverage seems to actually be trying to connect his playing video games with the fact that this guy decided to go smash in the head of a child. To wit, I present a quote from the article;

Spellman, 25, said he was playing one of Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon" games - a violent combat epic - in a front bedroom of his family's Brewerytown home that Thursday morning, Sept. 7.

Does adding the phrase "a violent combat epic" actually add to the validity of this article? Do they actually believe the game somehow caused Tyrone to wig out and kill a child? The levels to which the media will sink to pin violence on the latest societal scapegoat have gone too far. If this was a less heinous crime, I'd like to say that they were as bad as the perpetrator, but, well, you can't really compete with the kind of scum who murders a kid.