April 4, 2008 -
Conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly has criticized the unbroken string of First Amendment decisions which have protected video games in recent years.In a column for World Net Daily, Schlafly writes:
Extremely violent video games have become the dangerous obsession of a significant portion of our youth, and several towns and states have passed ordinances intended to prevent minors from buying or viewing them. But judicial supremacists are striking down these laws by claiming this extremely graphic violence deserves the same First Amendment protection as Shakespeare..
Judge Roger L. Wollman [Minnesota Case] ... observed that "great literature includes many themes and descriptions of violence... See, e.g., Judges 4:21 (NIV) ('But Jael, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to [Sisera] while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground and he died.')." What Wollman failed to add is that a literary description of violence in the Bible does not engage a teenager in role-playing or desensitize him to the harm...
Schlafly would, apparently, like to impose her definition of free speech, rather than the one upheld in nine federal court cases:
Legitimate free speech expresses violence in a rational context, rather than displaying it graphically to evoke an immediate emotional reaction. It is not a First Amendment right to cause panic on an airplane by shouting that someone has a bomb; nor is it legitimate free speech to evoke violent reactions in children through graphic video games...
A teenager who learns how to murder and mutilate human beings in video games is desensitized to commit heinous crimes against his neighbors. Nothing in the First Amendment should prevent regulations to stop this, supremacist judges to the contrary notwithstanding.
Comments
Anyway, I agree with jds. Just because what you see happens to be violent doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad, and such a judgment has little value coming from a pre-videogame generation member. And the argument of violent videogames displaying graphic violence in order to garner an "immediate emotional reaction" is utter nonsense. How many of us have seen "Band of Brothers?" Was not the ENTIRE POINT of the series to garner immediate emotional reactions of sadness and disbelief when exposed to graphic violence? This argument is a moot point; if the argument can't be attributed solely to the videogame industry, then it holds no real value.
Oh, BULL. What kid wouldn't read that and go 'ew', at least in their head?
Add another senile crock to the mix...
"A teenager who learns how to murder and mutilate human beings in video games is desensitized to commit heinous crimes against his neighbors."
Sounds great, and I'd agree wholeheartedly IF this woman can point out any single one person who learned how to murder and mutilate from a videogame.
In fact, just pointing out any videogame that actually teaches you how to murder and mutilate would be a good start for her - I sincerely doubt sci-fi and historic fantasy games would count, for starters. But nooooo, just like JT this lady doesn't need to go into specifics - she has truthiness on her side!
Also, the link between heroically neutralising enemy pixels and murdering your neighbours is surreal at best, insane at worst. Insert argument about how correlation does not equal causality here.
@ IllegallyMindedJohn
up, down, left, right, left, right, a, b, a
Sweet, now the coppers won't be able to stop me now (insert Bugsy Marone accent here) see! *attempts crime dies in shoot out*
Hey looks like reality and cheats don't work, huh who knew?
Yes, it does make sense. It's comparing one violent media to another. If you're against one for that reason, then you need to be against both if you're not a hypocrite.
When she died, the obituaries openly mocked her life's work. Nobody from the younger generation sought to replace her.
The rhetoric of people like Schlafly and Thompson will be treated by history in the same way.
Don't forget that given Romeo and Juliet's timeline, Juliet would have been around 13.
Violence AND underage sex!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Don't get me wrong, there's a war yet to fight; but, they need to direct their comments/money/time to solving real war problems. Not just the few kids who are already mentally unstable being prone to playing more violent games.
GET OFF THE SCAPEGOAT BANDWAGON YOU NINNIE.
It's listening to conservative know-nothings like Schafly ranting like this that are more likely to evoke me to commit violent (and hopefulyl bloody) acts - not the effing games!
Now... how is playing Halo like yelling that you have a bomb on a plane?
Because she has accepted the premise that videogames do in fact cause real lasting and significant harm.
See, if she is against violence to evoke an 'immediate emotional reaction', she should just lie down in the ground, she died years ago but hasn't realized it yet. Illiciting an emotional reaction IS art, she just argued with herself... and lost.
I guess she will all want us off her lawn soon as well.
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/passout
Blissful unconsciousness...
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
More often I hear her name or see you say it, I think "that has to be painful!"
yeah... um so lets ban every movie like saw and hostel then, and a load of books ('american psycho ' anybody?) as they have much viloence in a 'non-rational' context (whatever the exact definition of that may be)
"yeah… um so lets ban every movie like saw and hostel then, and a load of books (’american psycho ‘ anybody?) as they have much viloence in a ‘non-rational’ context (whatever the exact definition of that may be) "
Do you really think she would be oppsed to banning those as well?
But, unlike with XBox 360s, I still want to earn my Achievements while cheating. :P
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
I tried to write a letter, I got a snide remark back. Something along the lines of liking smack, being a pregnant teen, and a pedophile.
They're so stupid and annoying.
Yeah, I'm aware of the ignorance of that statement, but you know what? They're fucking ignorant too. Far more than me. EVER see a person who wasn't a 'concerned mother' under the age of 30 bitch about games? Hell, even under the age of 40? No.
But crusty old bags like this won't shut up with their ignorance and stupidity.
/rage
What about movies? The best example I could think of is "The Passion of Christ" and you do see changes in people's behaviour. Crimes against Jewish have raised considerably, such as mugs, verbal abuse, grave vandilization, etc.
Why aren't we banning the Passion of Christ if we do see relating statistics, but video games are the innocence killer even though there is no proof.
Ha ha ha, oh wow. That explains everything.
Where are the good ol' days when you could play a nintendo game like Paper Boy and not hear some daft lawyer or polition bitch and moan about it corrupting americas youth. I never herd someone complain that you could throw a paper through the windows of a house and some fat guy holding a wrench would try to run you down and beat the hell outta you.
Actually, the statistics show that violent crimes have actually DECREASED - though not by a huge margin - as games have become more popular.
While i'm not preaching that they two are related (though I do believe games can relax people and allow them to take out their frustrations), Crime has gone down as the game industry has gone up.
These people can claim all they want that games are causing violence, but the proof shows the opposite. What is their response for that?
Well they don't have one.
No Need to Tinker with the Constitution
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, November 19, 2007
Quote from the article:
"Let's face it. Some people, especially liberals, just don't like the U.S. Constitution. Every few years, they come up with wild or devious plans to make major changes."
So in this article, she wants to protect the Constitution from changes, yet above, she wants to go against a very clear First Amendment violation? Color me confused, Phyllis.
Judges Getting the Message About Illegal Immigrants
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, March 3, 2008
But in this article she crows about growing precedent about new immigration rulings.
"These three decisions in three different parts of the country included both Republican- and Democratic-appointed judges. In the term loved by the mainstream media, there is now bipartisan judicial support for state and local legislation against illegal immigrants. "
Now, I don't want to start an immigration debate, but one has to admit, the Constitutional law is ever so murky when it comes to immigration - nowhere near as clear cut as it is on Free Speech issues.
It's painfully clear that if she agrees with the ruling, it's a wonderful change for the better; if she disagrees with it, it's a an evil judge legislating from the bench.
She suffers from the failing of many pundits (not all from the Right, either) - that her worldview is the only correct one. And while I hold the same to be true, and so do most people, she takes any new evidence/event and warps it to fit her prejudices, instead of learning from it. It's a sign of an inflexible and weak mind - one that fears the unknown instead of yearning to make it known.
I truly pity her.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
I don't really see the point of asking if Schlafly would go after other violent media; she addresses that by playing the "context" card. In her world, videogames are controlled expressions of violence with no plot, whereas the biblical example is corralled by overarching historical elements. The problem is that folks like these are completely oblivious to the advancements in gaming technology over the last twenty years, and therefore have no idea that storylines have increased in length and complexity, thus validating whatever violence occurs. Vice City might not be Chekhov, but it's a long way from Death Race, too.
Fangamer
"(another court decision) held that violent video games are free speech because they contain "stories, imagery, age-old themes of literature and messages, even an ideology, just as books and movies do." But so do some adult pornographic movies, and no one insists there is a First Amendment right to sell them to children.
Is she living on the same planet as the rest of us? Take the legends of ancient greece, take the films based on them (Clash of the titans for example), take a game based on them (God of War), and take a pornographic film with a story based on them. They all have many story elements in common, but only one contains real human sexual content, which has been ruled as not for kids. It's a nasty little reference, no proof in itself but an attempt to compare video games to pornography, just like several failed laws have done.
"The decision compared violent video games to classic works of literature such as "The Odyssey," "The Divine Comedy" and "War and Peace." There is a distinct difference between sympathizing with the perpetrator of violence and being the perpetrator of violence, but that difference was apparently lost on the court."
Pressing a button on a controller does not make you the perpetrator of violence. In fact, pressing play on a DVD player with Saving Private Ryan inserted, or turning a page of a world war two novel make you as much of a perpetrator.
"It does not require a leap in imagination to see the risk of immature players transferring violent role-playing to real life."
It DOES require a leap to link the two, and boy can these people jump!
The First Amendment was designed to protect everyone's ability to think & speak without goverment interfearing. All that needs to happen here to prevent these violent games from getting into the hands of children is for parents to get more involved in their children's lives & to get educated about video games instead of just buying "Condemed" thinking it's like Mario or Tetris. We do not need to throw away our rights as American Citizens in order to "Save the children", the power is currently in each individual parents hands.
Perhaps we should spend some goverment dollars to help educate and create responsible parents instead.
She says the other forms of media are not interactive, but there are actual actors portraying the roles of characters like Hamlet and MacBeth, so they must be training to become murderers, poisoners, crucifiers, etc.
Seriously, someone should just change the words in her argument so that it's advocating the banning of movies about Jesus and send it back ot her. Just because I don't agree with what she says, and in fact believe what she is saying is harmful to society, I don't think trampling all over the First Admendment is the way to fix that little problem.
Some people are idiots.
When will they get that you can't "train" for violent acts on video games because video games are entirely unrealistic. I've played Battlefront 2, Halo 2, and several other violent video games. Do I know how to load a gun? No. Could I figure it out by playing those games? No.
33/300,000,000....hmmm....that would be .000011 of a percent of people thus affected. That is the definition of statistically insignificant. The FDA lets drugs on the market who KILL people at a higher rate than that every day.
Do these people not understand how math and statistics work?!!?
Most of these people who are spouting off are, in the big picture, just big fish in a little pond. They may have written books, be friends with someone in some form of government, or be some group leader, but they're all just little voices, ignorant, uneducated, uncaring little voices in the big world.
They're all going to have followers, but don't leaders of crazy little cults have followers? Like Lynden Laroche (la cucaracha!)? The only people who are really going to listen to blow hards like Schlafly (hehe, Schlafly), are people who already agree with her. Anyone, and I don't just mean gamers, ANYONE who cares enough to actually research the subject will she that they're all wrong, they're all trying to blow smoke up our asses, they're all just ignorant, blinded fools.
"The amount of aquanet used for that hair do could glue a cat onto a wall."
I was concered about her name sounding like a horrific deases, but now I'm afraid for cats.
Jarros is right it's time we crusade against Aquanet abuse! We need to save those poor innocent small animals who get glued to walls!
@ Shoehorn
The Divine Comdey was a great epic poem.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."