Continuing the trend of government officials leveling ridiculous charges over Internet content, Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson found out somebody online was making fun of him, got all sorts of butthurt and decided to sue the guy who hurt his widdle feelings. As an American, despite our wonderfully colorful politicians, this seems uncharacteristic for a public official. But then again, this is Michael Atkinson. Who is Michael Atkinson? I’m glad you asked.

See, in Australia, video games can’t get released unless they’ve been given a rating by the Classification Board. The ratings available to the Classification Board only go up to MA15+, which is roughly equivalent to America’s ESRB’s “T for Teen” rating. So, anything with more mature content than that can’t be classified and thus, can’t be released. You can see the dilemma.

Simple fix, right? Add a new rating. Problem solved! Easy! Well, not so much. In order for that to happen, Australia’s six attorneys-general must unanimously approve the new rating. And five do. Guess who the one is.

Atkinson firmly believes that creating a rating that would allow adult games into Australia would make it easy for children to access the mature content in those games. I wonder how hard it is for kids to get their hands on the R18+ DVDs for sale in Australia, or the pornos you can buy in certain territories? Hmm…

Oh, but it gets worse. Atkinson later repealed a controversial Internet censorship law that kept users from making anonymous comments regarding an election. This is good. But his reasoning was not. Atkinson, in a radio interview, used as an example a person named Aaron Fornarino who had, presumably, commented on several political posts. According to Atkinson, Fornarino was not a real person, but rather a plant by the Liberal Party; the repeal was necessary to ferret out fake commenters, like Fornarino, used by political parties.

Turns out Fornarino lived a few blocks down from Atkinson’s office.

But, wait! There’s more! A few weeks ago, Atkinson made this stunning statement: “I feel that my family and I are more at risk from gamers than we are from the outlaw motorcycle gangs who also hate me and are running a candidate against me.”

Apparently, a gamer left a “threatening note” on Atkinson’s doorstep. The attorney general restates his fear: “The outlaw motorcycle gangs haven’t been hanging around my doorstop at 2 a.m. A gamer has.”

Atkinson is right to be afraid, as threatening notes are the well-known first phase of attack by ninja gamers trained on Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. This step is, of course, preceded by Pocky Eating and Internet Anime Argument.

Finally, thanks to Kotaku’s wonderful reporting, we find out that a group that believes video games are as harmful as smoking counts Atkinson as one of its supporters.

And now we have Atkinson’s lawsuit. Somebody called him a crook on a website, Atkinson’s lawyers think the term is “highly defamatory” and want $20,000 in damages from defamation. One can only imagine the litigation overdrive these guys would go into if they ever glanced at a REAL forum.

I wanted to end this with some kind of joke, but I don’t think I can. I understand Atkinson’s belief that mature content in video games might be bad for kids. They’ve been doing studies on that for years, and with the number of competing opinions resulting from those tests, you can’t fault someone for holding one belief or another. Where I find fault is in the hypocrisy of standing in the way of mature video games, but abiding the sale of other forms of mature entertainment. If you have faith that store clerks won’t sell a 14-year-old kid an R rated movie, why can’t you have faith that a video game store clerk won’t sell an M rated game to the same kid?

Anyway, as one of the defenses against defamation is fair comment (defined as “an expression of an honestly held opinion or a criticism on a subject matter of public interest” by Electronic Frontiers Australia), let me say that it is my firm belief, my honestly held opinion, that Dean McQuillan was right and that because Atkinson has stood between Australia and mature video games, he has robbed countless Australian gamers of the experiences provided by those games, whether they be good, bad, funny, bloody, poignant or otherwise, and is, therefore, a crook.

But that’s just my opinion. Sue me.