#452 really?

I love to listen to sports talk radio. I enjoy sports and I enjoy hearing about sports and people commenting on sports and you always get more than just sports with sports talk radio.

On Friday afternoon I was listening to local sports radio - Bill and Spence on ESPN 700 here in SLC. Spence and Shep (Bill was gone to San Diego to call the tonight's Utes game) were talking about the uproar that Kobe Bryant has caused with his appearance in the "Call of Duty: Black Ops" video game TV commercial.

I have seen this commercial many times. My son, who is an avid gamer, told me about it the minute I walked in the door the other day. "Mom!" he yelled excitedly. "There's a commercial for Call of Duty that has Kobe Bryant in it and it's actually really cool!"

We are Kobe-haters in our house. We hate the Lakers and we especially hate Kobe. We acknowledge that he is a very, very good basketball player and the Lakers are, in fact, a very, very good basketball team, but we hate them and we hate him. We don't like anything about him. Except this commercial.

I like everything about the commercial. I like the music; it's my favorite Rolling Stones' song, "Gimme Shelter". The tagline of the commercial is "There's a soldier in all of us." The video shows regular people toting guns, grenades, rocket launchers etc., blowing things up. I do not condone violence or war, but I realize this is a commercial for a video game and even I will admit that the commercial makes the game look like it would be lots of fun. T assures me that it really is.

Back to the Bill and Spence show. Apparently there are some people who think that it's a very bad thing for Kobe Bryant to be in this commercial. He's a black man shooting a big gun with the words "Black Mamba" on it and he's wearing a Nike t-shirt. To some, all of that evidence translates into Kobe supporting guns and violence, and by his wearing a Nike t-shirt, Nike supports all that bad stuff too.

Really? Is that what you see?

Do you have a problem with the young lady wearing glasses and pearls carrying a machine gun and shooting at the building, then smiling when she takes cover? How about the guy dressed in hospital scrubs tossing a grenade? Surely you worry at the sight of the man in the suit who shoots his gun then takes cover to answer his phone, "Concierge"? You must quiver with worry at the last guy, dressed as a short-order cook who walks through it all shooting two pistols in true movie star fashion. And isn't that Jimmy Kimmel with a rocket launcher?

When I see that commercial, what I get out of it is that there are all kinds of people, from nice office worker ladies to medical technicians to concierges to fast food cooks to late night talk show hosts and even, gasp!, professional athletes who love to play video games.

Take a breath, people! Yes, there is way too much violence in the world. Yes, there will be almost certainly be people who will have a hard time separating the violence depicted in video games from real life. But not everyone. for most people, it's just for fun. (My brother-in-law is a soldier stationed in Iraq. I know that he doesn't play the video games. When T asked him if he'd like to play a game like Call of Duty, my BIL said, "No, T, I don't think so. That's my job, so I do different things in my free time.")

Anyway, Bill and Spence talked about Kobe and Call of Duty for awhile yesterday, and I've been thinking about it, so I thought I'd share my opinion, for what it's worth.

I'm going to try to put the commercial here so you can see it and decide for yourself.

Call of Duty: Black Ops