I am saddened by Henry's experience on the 'Donahue' show. What next, Phil? 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' made me stake my classmates? Now, can someone please tell me where I can find those 'power-up' hookers? Phil Donahue's cheap usage of teenage killings demonstrates only that there are children with severe mental and emotional problems who commit tragic acts of violence by pulling triggers or using knives, not by pushing buttons on a keypad.

Just listen to any of the several radio stations you can tune to while playing the game and you'll instantly discern that this is very funny satire and self-deprecating humor. No reasonable person would connect the comic book mayhem of Liberty City (GTA 3's setting) with reality any more than they would connect the mayhem of Rock Ridge with reality. The difference is, the graphics in this game are intentionally cartoonish. Yes, you can carjack and throw Molotov cocktails. Yes, you can drive on a sidewalk and mow down pedestrians. But it's difficult to take any of that seriously while you're laughing with tears in your eyes, and I submit the same holds true for Grand Theft Auto 3. And while it is indeed tasteless and violent, one may say the same thing about Mel Brooks' 'Blazing Saddles,' where, in the town of Rock Ridge, old ladies are beaten up, men are dragged through the streets, horses are hanged, and henchmen are literally dynamited into the sky. I am a reasonably progressive white male in my 40s, have a master's degree, do not own a gun, do not vote Republican, and to the best of my knowledge, am not a sociopath.

Ambushed salon