Herald on Bishop: D&D made her do it

Today in the Herald, Laurel Sweet takes the still-unfolding story of Amy Bishop in a new direction: Bishop, she reports, loved to play Dungeons & Dragons back in the day...just like Wakefield workplace killer Michael McDermott!

Bishop, now a University of Alabama professor, and her husband James Anderson met and fell in love in a Dungeons & Dragons club while biology students at Northeastern University in the early 1980s, and were heavily into the fantasy role-playing board game, a source told the Herald.

“They even acted this crap out,” the source said....

The popular fantasy role-playing game has a long history of controversy, with objections raised to its demonic and violent elements. Some experts have cited the D&D backgrounds of people who were later involved in violent crimes, while others say it [sic] just a game....

I am not, I confess, a Dungeons & Dragons connisseur. But I know the game has been around for a few decades--and in that time, it hasn't exactly spawned an epidemic of violence. Maybe that's why Sweet doesn't meet the traditional quota for a "trend" piece by citing a third Dungeons & Dragons-influenced killer.

Limited analytical value notwithstanding, Sweet's piece has generated some entertaining responses over at bostonherald.com. One commenter notes that Red Sox hero/conservative agitator Curt Schilling is a big D&D type, and forecasts a horrific Fenway massacre to come.  Another offers: "I heard she used to play hopscotch and jump rope as a child. That's it, time [to] ban these destructive activities from the past time of America's youth." And a commenter with the moniker johntheobscure weighs in with this:

My name is John Ruch. I freelanced for the Herald for years, during which I played D&D regularly, as I still do.

This article is the exact type of hateful, incompetent, fraudulent, lazy and incorrect "reporting" that convinced me to stop associating myself with the Herald.

 Feeling some back-to-the-80s deja vu? You're not alone: