If you believe the hype, the new video game Bully is the most corrupting thing to happen to teenagers since Elvis Presley gyrated his hips on "The Ed Sullivan Show..." In reality, the well-designed PlayStation 2 title from Rockstar Games is closer to a video game version of the movie "My Bodyguard," with fewer killings (none) than the typical episode of "Murder, She Wrote."

...while the hand-to-hand combat and dark humor more than earn the game a Teen rating (the approximate equivalent of a PG-13 movie), there's an underlying morality that is pervasive throughout the game... there was less sex talk during the eight hours that I played than the typical 22-minute episode of "The Golden Girls."

The furor that surrounded Bully in recent months highlights the stupidity of trying to ban a game that no one has actually seen. Without ever having played Bully, activist lawyer Jack Thompson labeled it "the violent Columbine simulator video game..."

Even if you agree that video games are too violent, focusing energy on Bully is like trying to raid a crack house and accidentally smashing in the door of the doughnut franchise across the street...