The folks over at Starvingeyes Advergaming have created a game that gives players the chance to bash in the brains of Tea Partiers from FOX News correspondents to Rep. Michele Bachmann in a bra. Their game, “Tea Party Zombies Must Die,” is a post-apocalyptic world where only small government conservatives and libertarians reside, and they’re all out to eat you.
MRC’s video is a visual summary of the game, but basically you’re supposed to run around and kill anyone who isn’t liberal. Lower classes of zombie include a “generic pissed off old white guy zombie” complete with an American flag tie, a “pissed off stupid white trash redneck birther zombie” and an “expresses racist views anonymously on the Internet modern Klan zombie” in tattered KKK garb. A bloodied Sarah Palin and a shirtless Michele Bachmann both make zombie appearances, as do a “factory made blonde” FOX News correspondent “barbie” and a number of presidential candidates and FOX News hosts. The final three zombies listed (and I’m assuming the last of the zombies that you meet in the game – I’m not wasting time to find out how long it takes to come across these creatures) are a Koch Industries (KI) lobbyist pig, a KI toxic “climate change denial” zombie and a two-headed Koch brothers zombie.
Locations of battle include FOX News Headquarters, the Americans for Prosperity offices and trailer parks – Tea Party home base, I guess; weapons include a crow bar, knife and pistol; and offended people should include everyone reading this post. Between levels, the game displays unhelpful blurbs about how taxes are lower under President Obama and how repealing ObamaCare would increase the deficit. Why the gamers give this information between levels and not, say, helpful strategy tips about how to best fight several advancing zombies at once is beyond me.
As an enjoyer of zombie lore (I suppose that’s what it’s called), I’m upset at the creators for this inaccurate interpretation of what today’s world would look like during a zombie apocalypse. First, it’s common knowledge that if you hit or shoot a zombie in the head, it goes down. I was most annoyed by the fact that after four hits with a crowbar the racist zombie was still coming after me while it took only one hit to stop the angry white guy undead. Zombies, like their living counterparts, are created equal. If you give them a good hit to the head, they’re all going down. True story. The whole levels of zombie thing – while flattering to FOX and friends who comprise the tougher upper levels of the game’s zombie hierarchy – isn’t realistic.
Of course, the characters comprising this game’s zombies aren’t realistic either. Realistically, the zombie plague/flu/disease would spread most readily in a city, so the pissed white guy and redneck would be the last people to turn into zombies. Why? Because they’re the people who cling to their God and – in this case more importantly – guns. Pretty sure the zombie epidemic would spread most quickly in populated areas that have a low gun-to-human ratio to curb the threat. And which party do the cities generally vote for? If you’re not convinced, take “World War Z” author (a New York Times bestseller, mind you) and zombie expert Max Brooks’ risk calculation test and see what kind of score the combination of not owning guns and living in a city gets you.
Next, 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. And while Starvingeyes has every right to make the game, they are blatantly ignoring the calls for less violent rhetoric in the wake of a recent shooting in Arizona that I guess they don’t remember.
A zombie invasion would bring America together, not divide us on party lines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recognized zombies as a realistic potential (and non-partisan) threat that everyone should be ready for. Starvingeyes needs to get over their hatred and focus on the real enemy – actual zombies.