Keith Vaz is a nasty little tick in the flea circus of British politics. A conniving, corrupt and ignorant individual, he vilifies videogames at every opportunity and admits he doesn’t even know what a PSP is when he does it. In addition, he has claimed that portable Sony games let you rape people. His most famous contribution to the world of gaming, however, is his moral crusade against Manhunt following the murder of Stefan Pakeerah.
Pakeerah was murdered in 2004 with a claw hammer as the result of a mugging, but rather than blame the attacker, the victim’s parents decided instead to go after Rockstar. Vaz backed up this erroneous and conclusively disproved claim, and for that ELSPA’s Michael Rawlinson believes Rockstar owes him a “thank you” card:
Keith Vaz has done more to sell Rockstar’s games than Rockstar has. The original Manhunt was released, did diddly squat and fell right off the radar until the Stefan Pakeerah incident came and Vaz started shouting from the rooftops and then everyone went and bought the stuff…
It’s a well-known irony by now that the people who attack this stuff achieve nothing but extra publicity, but it seems that people are always too stupid to realize they are nothing but walking billboards for that which they hate. Mind you, if Vaz was a clever man, he wouldn’t currently be under fire for trying to intervene in a police investigation on a friend’s behalf. Such a moral upholder of justice, that one.
