from: Liberal Street Fighter
A Dutch game player who more or less stumbled onto the sex scene shared the software online, and the next thing you know, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) declares war on java, along with the House of Representatives, whose members reacted to the GTA revelations almost as wildly as they did to the sexy saga of Bill and Monica.
When I was young, I hated the Nanny Party for supporting the Parent’s Music Resource Council. It seems that on this, like so many other issues, the Democrats have no memory and no sense. Despite the eroneous reports at the time, young voters (aged 18-29) did turn out in significantly increased numbers, and they voted for Senator John Kerry over Bush by a margin of 54 percent to 44 percent.
Time to piss off another group of constituents in pursuit of those mythical “undecided” voters.
The Senator called for an FTC Commission investigation, and has gotten her wish:
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. on Tuesday said the Federal Trade Commission had launched a probe of the company after recent revelations that its bestselling game, “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” contained hidden sex scenes.
The announcement came a day after House lawmakers passed a resolution asking the commission to investigate whether Take-Two misled consumers by failing to disclose the scenes to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.
The scenes, which can be viewed only by using software available on the Internet to unlock them, were made public by a Dutch programmer in June, prompting the rating board last week to yank the title’s original “Mature” rating and assign it an “Adults Only” rating. That led most U.S. retailers to pull the game off store shelves.
Eager to out-Republican the Republicans, the DC Dems are following Joe Lieberman’s lead and go after “pop culture” as the wellspring of all of our society’s ills. Forget about lack of education, lack of opportunities, lack of jobs … lack of HOPE, the problem is video games, music, movies and the internet:
A report titled “The Porn Standard: Children and Pornography on the Internet” from Third Way, a new Democratic think tank in Washington, says the largest group of consumers of Internet porn is children ages 12 to 17, with the average age of first exposure being 11.
[…]
Third Way was formed recently to help Democrats challenge Republican dominance on issues like family values.
And so it’s no accident that, Wednesday, a group of congressional Democrats pounced on the issue, introducing a bill that would require Internet porn sites to verify the age of anyone trying to gain access and imposing a 25 percent tax on purchases made on porn sites.
“I think we’ve given them plenty of time and plenty of chances to clean up their act,” says Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. “And they haven’t done it. And my impression is they’re not going to do it. There’s too much money at stake.”
I turned away from the Gore/Lieberman ticket over their censorious ways (as well as other issues). Scream all you want about how there is a difference between the two parties, and I’m stupid for being unwilling to see it, but just because the Dems want to limit citizen’s freedoms “for their own good” doesn’t make it better than the Republicans, who want to do it “because it’s immoral.”
I will let the words of Frank Zappa speak for how stupid and unproductive these policies are, from his Frank Zappa: Statement To Congress, September 19, 1985:
The First thing I would like to do, because I know there is some foreign press involved here and they might not understand what the issue is about, one of the things the issue is about is the First Amendment to the Constitution, and it is short and I would like to read it so they will understand. It says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That is for reference.[…]
The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years, dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal’s design.
It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment Issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC’s demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation.
No one has forced Mrs. Baker or Mrs. Gore to bring Prince or Sheena Easton into their homes. Thanks to the Constitution, they are free to buy other forms of music for their children. Apparently, they insist on purchasing the works of contemporary recording artists in order to support a personal illusion of aerobic sophistication. Ladies, please be advised: The $8.98 purchase price does not entitle you to a kiss on the foot from the composer or performer in exchange for a spin on the family Victrola. Taken as a whole, the complete list of PMRC demands reads like an instruction manual for some sinister kind of “toilet training program” to house-break all composers and performers because of the lyrics of a few. Ladies, how dare you?
[…]
The PMRC promotes their program as a harmless type of consumer information service providing ‘guidelines’ which will assist baffled parents in the determination of the ‘suitability’ of records listened to by ‘very young children’. The methods they propose have several unfortunately [sic] side effects, not the least of which is the reduction of all American Music, recorded and live, to the intellectual level of a Saturday morning cartoon show.
Children in the vulnerable age bracket have a natural love for music. If, as a parent, you believe they should be exposed to something more uplifting than “Sugar Walls,” support Music Appreciation programs in schools. Why have you not considered your child’s need for consumer information? Music Appreciation costs very little compared to sports expenditures. Your children have a right to know that something besides pop music exists.
lt is unfortunate that the PMRC would rather dispense governmentally sanitized heavy metal music than something more uplifting. Is this an indication of PMRC’s personal taste, or just another manifestation of the low priority this administration has placed on education for the arts in America?
Mr. Zappa was right then, and what he said holds true now. NO ONE likes a busybody other than another busybody. It would be nice if our supposed leaders would actually work on some real issues, work on defining a program for a Democratic Party that speaks for the poor, speaks for children, speaks for women, speaks for labor, speaks for a strong, healthy and educated citizenry that can make up its OWN mind about what to watch, read, listen to or play.
Of course, that would require actually standing for something other than cheap political theater and the demands of inside-the-beltway “conventional wisdom.” Not going to happen anytime soon.
