December 8, 2006
Aside from an Associated Press report, there has so far been little notice paid in the mainstream media to yesterday's surprising announcement that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman are backing an ESRB initiative designed to increase parental awareness of video game ratings.The conservative Washington Times, however, offers some analysis in this morning's edition, quoting Sen. Clinton as saying:
These PSAs are a great gift for parents. They provide information to help parents provide a healthy environment for their children... Parents are really hungry for this information.
The Times spoke to Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, who credited Sen. Clinton for making a politically savvy decision to partner with the game industry on the parental awareness campaign:
It's a very adroit move to find an issue in which she can work with Mr. Lieberman after this past election... The idea of sort of being offended by some of the coarsening elements of the culture is not as ideological as people assume. It would not surprise me if Mrs. Clinton had just sort of seen some of the violence and was offended by it.
Another conservative, Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation, added:
I don't assume that everything Senator Clinton is doing is political, but clearly, because so many parents care about this issue, this would certainly help for Senator Clinton to promote the perception that she is a moderate Democrat.
Comments
I mean I should be happy and all, but it seems more like a marriage of convenience than any change of policy. NIMF pulled the rug out from under their "teh retailers are teh evil!" leanings, so the only way to get anything done now is to do these PSAs. I mean your call to slap around retailers hardly has support if a national parent watchdog group drops the whole "retailers are bad" deal and starts questioning whether parents truly care about what their kids are watching/playing...
Watch out, Censorcrats. It's only a matter of time.....
It is a shame it took this long for the idea to get through those thick skulls.
This entire issue is much larger than JT. He jumped on the band wagon with school shootings. Please, stop making jack out to be bigger than he is.
I admit it. Jack Thompson didn't start the controversy against the video game industry. That was Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl, who started complaining about the violence in Mortal Kombat. However, Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl have, for the most part, moved on. They really don't make attacking the video game industry their carreer. When I read about controversy in video games, the name Jack Thompson keeps coming up. He's the one who keeps it going.
It's bigger than Jack Thompson, but it would probably end if Jack Thompson gave it up because, as I said up there, many more important things are going on in the world and the government wouldn't care about video games if Jack Thompson didn't keep saying that these games are murder simulators and that they're destroying the minds of young people. If he stopped with all that garbage, then the government would pay attention to more important issues and the whole video game issue would fade into the past. In conclusion,while he didn't start it, he is the most vigorous enemy of video games out there.
He didn't start it, he just jumped in and started screaming out from inside the box. He is not its lifeforce. It will go on with or without him. As long as there are people who think violent video games affect our generation, it will continue.