July 21, 2004
Video Games and the Last Election
Meanwhile, another sign of stir crazy things going on at the Gore campaign, Chris Lehane, the campaign press secretary — I am told not directly by Mr. Lehane, but by those who have witnessed this — is playing a video game and vowing to continue to play the same video game until he gets a decision from the Supreme Court.
— Jonathan Karl, CNN Correspondent
I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of why those Democrats have delayed Opinions. Bad associations from the past?
In the cleaned-up version of that transcript that is posted on the Web, Karl says the video game was Tank. The game was also identified in USA Today as Tank.
Either Lehane was a real classic arcade game fan or these reports were in error. Tank, by Kee Games, was the first arcade game to use ROM chips, and was released in 1974, back before the Atari VCS, back before the invention of the Internet. It was the basis for the Tank games in the original Atari VCS cartridge, Combat. It’d be pretty amazing if one had been out and available in 2000.
Of course, it’s possible that Lehane just quickly made up a name, because he was too embarrassed to admit that he was actually playing PaRappa the Rapper.