Jeff and .NET

Well said, that man.

You think that's bad, us poor Aussies have to deal with the fact that the highest rating that can be given by our "Authorities" is M 15+. This means that GTA (like Leisure Suit Larry and Manhunt) won't be classified, and therefore not able to be sold. In effect, the games are banned from sale.

Being 28, shouldn't it be MY choice as to what games (movies, etc) I want to play/see? And as a parent, isn't it MY responsibility to ensure my kids don't play games or watch movies that I don't think are appropriate for them?

It seems the whole world (and not just Australia) is heading down a path where people are no longer being held responsible for their own actions. It's getting very sad indeed.

What's even more amazing is that local pols (here in Sillycon Valley), specifically a certain Kahlifawnia Assembly member, just got done with an interview on the local news and made the following assinine assertion: the game ratings board (ESRB?) has "totally failed to protect parents and children from this type of content."

'Scuse ME? It's the ratings board's responsibility to protect the PARENTS? I'm sure this is NEWS to ratings board members! (Now everyone that's in a tizzy over this not only wants the rating board to do the parenting for the parents, but also make sure the parents never have to encounter "said questionable material"...for fear their little parental minds might get damaged!)

He actually said this nonsense no less than 3 times in 3-4 minutes.

He should be so lucky he's not MY Assembly representative...else I would feel compelled to work to get rid of him at his re-election...just based on that bit of nonsense!

Methinks that the histeria surrounding this is JUST STARTING...

Why, I can see in my crystal ball more reactions to this bit of "adult content":

1) Can you imagine what will happen when Johnny takes this game to school to swap games with his friends? And he gets caught by the gendarme-at-hand, namely the Assistant Principal in charge of rules, policies, and corporal punishment? Somehow I think most of these Nazi's....er, fine Asst. Principals with a propensity to paddle the behinds of JDs (juvenile delinqents)....will react the same as when little 7-year-old Susie brought that plastic butter knife to school in her lunch-box last year (to cut her banana to put on her sandwich). I.e., don't just take the video game away from Johnny, but DISARM HIM as if the game is a WEAPON. (Calling the local police wouldn't be out of the question to do the dsiarming and search his locker...after strip-searching him, of course!) And, obviously, permanently expel him,,,,just like Susie was last year. (Don't laugh: there have been over a dozen little Susie's across this great paranoid country of ours. As if a 7-year 60-pound girl could do substantial damage with a plastic knife!) ZERO TOLERANCE, we say! ZERO TOLERANCE!

2) Of course, reaction #1 wouldn't be possible if it weren't for that early warning system known as the "teacher legal squeal list". I.e,. the list of criminal violations for which teachers are legally bound to report as part of their policing of the little criminals. Right below "plastic knifes", "nail clippers" in the "Disallowed Weapons" section of the laws will be "video games with such-n-such content ratings" added by hundreds of school boards, and codified by hundreds of cities, potentially all 3220 counties, and all state-houses. (Don't laugh: there are hundreds of cities and counties that prohibit exhibition of movies based upon movie content ratings!) I'd rather our teachers be busy looking for signs of child abuse than in possession of "contraband". (Oops! I suppose this contraband could be considered evidence of child abuse, eh?)

3) Luckilly, there is just enough time to enhance the USA Patriot Act (currently about to be re-enacted upon the unsuspecting Amerikun public), by codifying the teacher squeal lists into federal law. Afterall, a student in possession of an adult-content video game should certainly be considered a terrorist, RIGHT?!?!?! At the least, The Act (to End All Terrorism) should be extended to allow for G-men to search sales receipts at any Circuit City, CompUSA, Fry's, etc. for these little terrorists-in-the-making!

4) And, of course, in those enlightended states that have enacted that hyper-reactive Megan's Law system of posting child abusers names, photos, and addresses on webpages of local police departments, some will call for such terrorists-in-training to be "exposed to the bright public light" on a webpage of their own. Little Susie and Johnny would have their mugshots, addresses, and school board conviction (er...expulsion reason)...in order to warn the parents in the local neighborhood that they shouldn't let their Little Brittany or Jimmy play with THOSE KIND OF JDs!!! (I can just see some of these parents walking the neighborhood passing out flyers to warn other parents about Little Susie and Johnny...)

What's really sad about this, is that I've always supported the public school system and library system by voting for each and every property tax and bond issue that would benefit them...out of a sense of social duty. I am now beginning to think that by helping parents to raise their kids by helping to provide the infrastructure in society has gone terribly haywire in the past 20 years. This kind of silly scape-goating and non-parenting is starting to make me understand why so many senior citizens are unwilling to support local school bonds and taxes (with the attitude of "WHY should *I* give a crap about someone ELSES KIDS?!?!?!")

This over-reaction is souring my attitude towards parents in general.

Oh, yeah... Almost forgot to cite the following absurdity that happened in the Great Midwest (in the county where I grew up):

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-molest01.html

After reading that article, I concluded that my civic/social duty was going to have to be curtailed, else my freedoms would be certainly be screwed over for the rest of my life! (I USED to be a good samaritan by stopping at accidents, having had a lot of Red Cross First Aid training, but after someone threatened to sue me for stabilizing their compound broken arm with an air-splint, which I had used several dozen times, I've stopped giving help on the freeways. The above article just adds yet another good samaritan duty which I will no longer partake. The three kids whose lives I saved from traffic years ago are the last which I will save!)

Even though states all have enacted "Good Samaritan Laws" to help insulate the samaritan from liability, it doesn't seem to have sunk in that the state/county/city themselves ought to be adhering to the same laws they passed!

Basically, society is on a train-wreck-path if parents continue to react against other adults chastising their children in public, chastising their children in schools, or even acting as a good samaritan in their absence. Apparently, parents just WANT nature to TAKE COURSE!

For now on, instead of telling a parent their kid was on my property smoking up on some crack, I'll just do the non-samaritan thing and call the cops. Instead of yanking their child out of the way of a 50 MPH homicidal speeder, I shall let nature take it's course, and just hope the parents decide not to pollute the gene pool by having another stupid kid.

Hhhhuummmm..... Sounds like I've developed an attitude problem, eh?

And to actually think I was considering moving back out of Kawlifawnia to the Midwest, specifically, Cook county in Illinois where I grew up as a kid....because I LIKED the fact that adults looked out for other family's children and had a sense of civic duty! BOY...has Cook county ever changed over 30 years! (Have the local Neo-Nazis finally seized control of the local DA's office?!?!?!)

This ZERO TOLERANCE shinola is for the birds!

Hello,

If the store wants to pull it, it's their store. They have a right to pull it. To argue that they can't, whether anyone agrees with their motives or not, is as wrong as me saying I don't like your choice in favor of it, so I'm going to call you stupid and all kinds of names (as you've done) and force you to remove it from your house. They are not forcing you to not see it. JUST NOT FROM THEIR STORE.

RIGHTS GO BOTH WAYS. For this to be called Typical American Stupidity, and all this talk of who's parenting, and everthing else this is escalating towards, is well, stupidity. All they are saying is "NOT IN MY STORE".

Please.... MOVE ON!!!

That's not the point. I could care less what the store does, it's the stupid double standard we have that annoys me. You move on.

I don't understand where the confusion lies in this matter. Kids have been playing "cowboys and Indians" since, well, cowboys and Indians. Make believe violence, while desensitizing us to real life violence and possibly even lowering our empathy to others doesn't _cause_ real-life violence. Society allows for kids to play "cowboys and Indians" but they don't allow kids to play "pimp and ho" for a reason. Puritanical values are not necessarily evil. Look across the Pond and see where Europe is headed. Socialism has brutally destroyed their economy, making most of the countries nanny states while a lax attitude towards premarital and out of wedlock sex correlates with a society in which is cannot sustain itself with the current birthrate.

The alternative to "typical American stupidity" towards violence is the nanny states you have in England and Australia, where both have introduced legislation (and in some instances approved it) where they have outlawed swords and pointed weapons. So this is what we come to as a society? Where we condone infanticide and out of wedlock births but have a serious problem with law abiding citizens protecting themselves from the seedier parts of society? Myself? Well, I prefer to stand by "typical American stupidity".

I respectfully disagree with your viewpoint on this, Jeff, I think we both can agree that the ESRB rating system is for parents and not kids. For it is the parents who are purchasing these games for their kids and thus, should be shouldering the majority of the responsibility. I, for one, do not need the gov't telling me how I should raise my kids. And just as a final disclaimer, I do not think any kid under 17 or 18 should be playing GTA, but that is just a generalization. All kids are different and have different levels of maturity. A kid with a solid, moral background might be able to play these games at an earlier age without it affecting them.

anon,

So what you are saying is that America is stupid because they accept guns over sex, and UK is stupid because they accept sex over guns, but you prefer the guns over the sex?

You back your arguments by saying socialism is to blame and results in higher birthrates and a poor economy. You may want to be aware of the following stats (from finance.yahoo.com):

UK:
Pop. Growth: 0.230%
GDP Growth: 1.66%

US:
Pop Growth: 1.24%
GDP Growth: -0.930

So on what grounds has socialism caused out of control birthrates in the UK again? Ours (America) is 5 times as large per capita, and our GDP growth is negative. Considering, our current conservative adminstration (the extreme opposite of a socialist government), I find it amusing you think high birth rates and bad economy are caused by socialism.

On the other hand, perhaps you can make a point about homicide rates between the UK and US, since we are armed with guns and knives which would surely dissuade an attacker - right?

UK - (2003 - 2004) (from www.crimestatistics.org.uk)
Pop: 52,570,245
Homicides: 854
Summary: 1 out of every 61,558 people

US - (2003) (from www.fbi.gov)
Pop: 290,809,777
Homicides: 16,503
Summary: 1 out of every 17,622 people

Nope - sorry. Looks like the "typical American stupidity" you prefer results in higher birthrates, poorer economy, and higher homicide rates.

I agree with Jeff in that there shouldn't be a double standard regardless of how or to what extent its enforced. I know its seems innocent and benign to us, but if you really think about it, its horrible that children play "cowboys and Indians". How would you feel if you were an American Indian watching children mimic how "cowboys" over-powered the primitive "Indians", killed them and stole their land. I don't think they would find it as innocent and amusing as most of America. We won that fight, and we have to be able to live with ourselves - so we have made it acceptable when it really shouldn't be. Do German kids play "Nazis and Jews"?

I'm actually playing GTA:SA right now. Fun game. Total reality disconnect. Crash cars, fly planes into restricted army bases, sabotage the vietnemese gang drug trade, and (Ocean's Eleven style) bust into a casino and steal the money

I'm 29. I have fun playing this game. I would NEVER allow any child under 18 or 17 to play it. Period. Isnt the ESRB rating MA? MA as in Mature Audience. In a sense, NC-17.

Yeah, and now that theres some nudity in it, everything changes? Come on people get a grip.

These types of games are hitting a sweet spot of college - middle aged guys that just wanna break into a game thats not focused on trolls, elves, and gay cartoon characters. (aka Mario, Yoshi, Toadstool, and whatever)

Yeah its raw... but frankly ITS JUST A GAME. No more violent than news of multiple slayings in a house in Arizona by some illegal immigrant. Or a child rapist that kills two kids family, and proceeds to parade the innocent girl around the country with some other nefarious deed planned for her.

I'm saying I want to choice to make decisions for my own, not the government. Its not the government's responsibility to take care of any offspring I might have in the future. Its my responsibility.

However, many tend to believe that government is supposed to do everything, "It Takes a Village to raise a child?" This is the rhetoric from the liberal left. "Leave me the hell alone"... thats the extreme right... Just need to find a balance between the two. And for the most part I believe its just about there.

Ron, those are interesting stats. Spun a little to support your argument but interesting nevertheless.

Why is it so horrible to play cowboys and indians? or cops and robbers? Are we getting politically correct here? If I wave my hand like a tomahawk and chant the FSU seminole indian call, am I defaming the seminole native americans?

Theres too much entitlement. Its this entitlement mentality that is linked to this politicizing of everything...

Eric: You've gotta be kidding me on the left vs. right thing. The Ashcroft types going after porn are hardly what I'd call liberal or left. When it comes to trying to silence things people don't like, that's hardly a phenomenon restricted to one side of the aisle.

Eric-

If by "spun", are you referring to my conclusion that the administrations of the two countries are directly linked to the quoted stats?

Yes, I am sure other factors come into play, but its rediculous to think that an administration is a helpless victim of the social and economic climate of their own countries. There is always SOMETHING that can be done. Government is not a plan that can be put in place and left to its own devices with a predictable outcome - situations change and government can and must react to those changes in a meaningful and helpful way.

By the way, the government IS responsible for the offspring you produce. If your kids turn out bad, the government (via taxes) foots the bill for the police, courts, prisons, and mental institutions used to clean up your mess. The government is solely responsible for keeping those kind of people from interrupting the daily lives of the rest of us. Sure you can say that YOUR kids will never be that way - but this is not a perfect world - there will always be people who just don't care about the state of things around them.

As for "cowboys and indians": Do you not see a difference between an "Indian" and a "robber"? You use "politically correct" as if it's a dirty word. I agree sometimes it's taken too far, but the underlying effort is to be sensitive to the people around you. You can't make a broad sweeping statement that all sensitivity toward others is bad, because sometimes it's taken too far. Think about it, how would you feel if you were a jew and the neighborhood kids like to pretend to imprison you, starve you, gas you, and bury you in a mass grave? Sound like fun times?

Of course there is nothing we can do about it now, but we definately shouldn't glorify it.