Maddness

I know I've already covered this, but the stupidity of people compels me to mention it again. This revolves around the recent "scandal" with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where it was discovered that the developer left an unenabled sex scene in the game which could be enabled by downloading an unsanctioned hack on the internet. All this of course has been made a big issue of by that shining beacon of virtue and morality, Sen. Hillary Clinton (more on her later).
These three quotes are from the same article and pretty much say it all (emphases are mine):

"A woman upset that she bought the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for her 14-year-old grandson without knowing it contained hidden, sexually explicit scenes sued the manufacturer Wednesday on behalf of consumers nationwide."

"Cohen said in the suit that she bought the game in late 2004 for her grandson when it was rated "M" for mature, for players 17 and older."

"Laurence D. Paskowitz, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Cohen, said no parent would knowingly buy an adult-only video game for their children."

So, apparently, parent's are okay buying Mature video games for their underage children, but not Adult-Only. It's like parents who take their 8 year-olds to R rated movies, as if the parent's presence makes it have less of an effect on the child than if the child snuck in on their own. The problem with ratings is that they're nice guides but they are so general you still have to examine the content. In this case Rockstar had to really push the ESRB to get the Mature rating instead of the Adult-Only (hence the disabling of the sex scene and other minor tweaks). Why? Because major stores typically don't carry Adult-Only games, and it's a proven fact that parents will buy anything for their kids sight unseen as long as the kid wants it (and of course, kids are drawn to Mature games, esp one as popular and cool as GTA). So, you have a Mature game that is borderline Adult-Only, and 12-14 year olds are playing it. I blame the parents more than I do Rockstar. Sure they put it on the market, but the parents are the ones who don't care enough to filter their kid's activities (although, ironically, my cousin Tyler got Age of Empires II for his birthday and it's rated Teen [probably because little kids don't have the patience for it, not because of anything remotely bad], so his dad wouldn't let him install it until it was examined and approved. Fortunatly I was able to expidite the process.)
Possibly more sad than all this is that fact that most of the children of the outraged (read "outsmarted") parents think this is all stupid because, while their parents are concerned over sex in video games, the kids are out having sex in real life. Both are bad, but one is worse.
This brings us back to Sen. Clinton. Her entire concern for this matter is a sham. It goes something like this: present an image of morality and concern for children by attacking sex in video games (so she can get labelled as a moderate for the next presidential election), while at the same time sponsoring promotion of real sex to kids in school (because, hey, they're going to do it no matter what...plus it's actually healthy, as we discovered in the 60's).

Okay, I don't even know where to go with this anymore. It's just quite frustrating.

I'm sure no one cares but me, but here's the link to the referenced article:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/07/27/game.lawsuit.ap/index.html

Okay, later all.