Mass Effect : Fox News Expert "Misspoke"

Fox News expert analyst, Cooper Lawrence who characterised BioWare's Mass Effect as "degrading to women" having never played or seen the game, has said that she regrets her comments.

Speaking to The New York Times, Lawrence (a self-help author and developmental psychologist) said, "I recognize that I misspoke. I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke." Since the show on which she made her comments, Ms Lawrence has sat and watched someone play the game for two and a half hours.

"Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography", Lawrence said. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of Lost that are more sexually explicit".

Lost, 'sexually explicit'?! Filthy! And fortunately for Lawrence, produced by ABC Studios, Bad Robot Productions and Grass Skirt Productions - none of which is related to Fox or News International. It is, of course, unlikely that Cooper would have mentioned, The OC or Family Guy - both of which are Fox productions; both of which were mentioned by Electronic Arts' VP of Communications, Jeff Brown, in his letter calling for a correction.

Remember, it didn't threaten to go to law. It merely called for Fox News to be fair.

Fox (or any of News International) has done no such thing. Fox News, however, has offered EA the chance to appear on the channel.

SPOnG has contacted EA to find out if a decision has been reached and is awaiting a response.

SPOnG would like to think that Ms Lawrence is an earnest human being who feels she made a foolish mistake and is genuinely repentant. We have a nasty suspicion, however, that her "regret" stems from the slating her book, The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Overachiever, has received on Amazon as a result of her comments on Fox 'News'.

As of Friday some 412 of the book's 472 user reviews gave the book one star out of five. A further 48 gave it two stars. A meagre 12 reviewers had given the book three stars or more. At the time of press, the number of one star reviews was down to 41, with eight reviewers having given it two stars and a single four star review having been dished out. Why? Amazon said that it would take down any reviews from posters who clearly hadn't read the book.

Amazon: SPOnG salutes you for your even-handed treatment of the book and only allowing opinions based on appropriate appreciation of the materiel to be published! Appalled gamers who posted on Amazon: SPOnG salutes you for creatively focusing your rage!

Let's hope this puts the whole sorry saga to rest and that we can now go back watching fair, informed and impartial - nay, balanced! - news on the Fox News Channel once again. The channel does, after all, belong to News International which brings us such hilarious programming pleasure as The Simpsons; and such sporty goodness as the NFL, NBA and NBL - someone really should make some games from those.

Remind yourself of the facts
You can find a slice of rather tame Mass Effect lesbian action (which is completely in keeping with the game's complex emotional and character-driven story, obviously) here. You can watch the Fox News footage at the bottom of this news story.