Hillary Clinton’s Best Gift Ever to 13 Year Olds

Just when we thought the Tipper Gore era of trying to prevent teenagers from hearing dirty words and thinking dirty thoughts was over, there’s a new light on the horizon. Hillary Clinton recently announced that as part of her agenda of change, she fully intends on bringing back the Bill Clinton / Tipper Gore / Janet Reno attempts to limit teenage access to violent and sexually explicit video game content. But before you start pulling out your hair, you have to realize that for teenagers who enjoy playing violent, sexually explicit games, this is the best thing that could happen.

Every now and again, politicians get a hair up their ass or wake up on the wrong side of the bed or are wined and dined by the right interest group and stand up on their soapbox in feigned outrage over what’s happening to “the children”. But honestly, the children will be fine. Every generation of humankind since humankind began has complained about those damn kids and how something or another was ruining the current generation and it was only a matter of decades before the human race ceased to exist. Every decade or so, politicians, in a lame attempt to put their name in the headlines promise parents of this country that they can rest easy and don’t have to worry about actually raising their children because the government has a comprehensive plan to do it for them through sweeping legislation and radical new agendas, shifting the paradigm one way or the other. If it’s not radio or phonographs, it’s television and movies, if it’s not TV and movies, it’s the internet, rap music, Marilyn Manson and video games.

However every attempt that Washington or Albany or Raleigh or Tallahassee or Sacramento makes to limit children’s exposure to lewd, violent or “questionable” media only serves as a part of a self-perpetuating cycle that leads to more lewd, violent or “questionable” media. Soapbox legislation now and fodder for soapbox legislation two election cycles down the road.

Thank you Satan MPAA

It’s fair to say that movie ratings serve a purpose to give an audience a decent idea of what sort of activities they might expect from a film or a video game. Without ratings you might say, there would always be the possibility that the light-hearted romantic comedy you expected turns out to be a raunchy porno and that, in the name of truth in advertising is a legitimate claim. Even in the most innocent sense of TV and game ratings, one could fairly make the argument that parents don’t have the time to keep up with every new show or video game and ratings give them a general idea of the content of such media to make decisions on what they want their children to be exposed to. Fair enough. However the idea that the government alone can restrict access or somehow “save” children through the letter M or the letter R is where the whole process becomes a mockery of government oversight.

Before film ratings were implemented in 1968, cities and towns made decisions on what movies could be shown in their town and that provided a certain level of comfort to families who wanted to keep evil out of their lives. In 1968 when the MPAA ratings were put into place, a funny thing happened: movies that were once only restricted by towns or by parents to adults that now had this official government segregation of what was good for children and what was good for grown-ups suddenly had free reign to become even more violent and more explicit, with the impression that the letters R or X would forever shield children from adult debaucheries. It’s as if instead of ratings simply being a form of information to the consumer that they were touted by politicians as impenetrable curtains where on one side there were children, forever preserved in purity and on the other side there was the world of adulthood that suddenly could be as nasty as it wanted to be.

Nasty as they wanna be

In 1985, the world was treated to the charm of Tipper Gore when she and the RIAA introduced the iconic Parental Advisory: Explicit Content labels for music. These labels were meant not only as a warning to parents, but a black and white badge of shame for any artist that wasn’t decent enough to sing about snowflake innocent teenagers holding hands at the school dance. Instead, the predictable happened: the badge served as a warning to teens as to which music was lame and which music was fun and cutting edge enough to piss off your parents. And as time went on, as time does, music became a little more explicit with every generation, aided a little along its natural trajectory by this tiny little sticker.

In 1997, under the reign of Clinton I, the TV Parental Guideline system went into place, forever ensuring that with the TV-Y to TV-MA system would shield children from the horrors of adult thought on the television. Also in 1997, the world was introduced to the most foul-mouthed animated elementary school children the small screen had ever seen on some little show called South Park. Before the TV rating system, South Park could not have existed on television except behind the veil of paid cable channels such as HBO and Showtime, both of which offer parents a clear choice– if you don’t want your children to see such things, you don’t buy HBO or Showtime and it won’t be in your home. However with TV ratings, slap a TV-MA rating on a show, put it just barely past what politicians believe should be a child’s proper bedtime and blammo– as much shit, fuck, cunt, damn as you can fit into 20 minutes of television. And it’s amazing how well this has worked, since apparently not a single person under the age of 18 has even heard of South Park. Right. By creating a rating system that pretends that it can preserve the innocence of children, Tipper Gore helped to create South Park. Someone ought to send her a well-worded thank you letter.

Animated violence throws children into an uncontrollable frenzy/

Seeing how wellthe TV rating system worked to keep violent and objectionable content away from the kids in the realm of television, further attempts were made to move this success into the realm of video games with the video game content rating system. Improved graphics capability and processing power was beginning to make video games more realistic and more immersive than ever before and this made a couple parents nervous and Washington went into full lockdown mode, seeming to blame almost every act of violence perpetuated by teenagers as somehow directly related to video games, as if teenagers being douchebags to each other and everyone else was a new concept. Every time local or national media felt the urge, the question was being thrust into American homes– are video games turning your kids into mindless murdering zombies?

Games like Doom and (gasp!) Grand Theft Auto were targeted by Washington politicians who apparently had little else to do but stand in front of their colleagues and the nation and decry this digital brainwashing that had magically overnight turned America from a land of unicorns and rainbows to a festering stinkhole of violence. Obviously no other social factors were at work. Obviously if the politicians could regulate video games, America would return to its previous utopian land of milk and honey and hugs and Kumbaya. As if video games were purely an American phenomenon, many voters ate this up and re-elected politicians who took a witch hunt stand on video game makers. How countries with other huge gamer populations such as South Korea, Japan, Great Britain, Canada, Sweden and Norway escaped this blight seemed to escape the suits on Capital Hill.

Blaming video games or music or television or movies for all of society’s ills is convenient for politicians– without having to muss their own status quo or dig too deep into the issues at the heart of American discontent they can offer voters a quick soundbyte on how by adding one more layer they can forever cure all of the country’s ills with a stroke of a pen. Blaming video games or music or TV or movies is convenient for parents– who either claim to not have the time nor ability to prevent their snowflakes from turning into rampaging hellions and feel confident for at least a little while that being able to keep any video game with an M rating out of their home will absolve them of any other responsibility, when recent studies have found that 90% of parent don’t check the ratings of games their children buy. With a witch hunt mentality, suddenly everyone has a quick fix that makes them sleep better at night with the hopes that upon waking all violence will have disappeared into the morning fog.

This is obviously all Ice-T’s fault.

Social problems with this country are not the problem of entertainment and the politicians and parents both know this at heart. Social issues will not be mended simply by removing a video game from a store shelf and most people understand this, yet politicians continue to make this claim and voters it seem continue to eat it up. However, it seems that most people are beginning to understand that video games are but a sorry cover-up for so many other issues even if the media and politicians continue to try and milk the idea for a little bit of limelight. After last year’s tragic VT shootings, local media tried to ply the shooter’s roommate for answers, asking what kind of video games the shooter played, to which the roommate responded– “Well I don’t really remember him playing video games.” Last week, two young girls beat another child to death and tried to blame it on Mortal Kombat (blast from the past that is) and just today, Wired reported on a Chinese boy that set himself on fire after claiming World of Warcraft had warped his brain to the point he actually thought he was a fire mage. Fortunately, Chinese authorities weren’t buying any of it. Much like the reefer madness scare of the 60s, most people are waking up to this latest ruse and realizing it never had any teeth.

Yet politicians such as Hillary Clinton continue to go down the path that we’ve traveled before, insisting that it’s possible in a free and democratic society to completely sever children from the outside world and that this is the best path for the country. Yet as history shows, the worst thing any politician could do if they truly and legitimately want to reduce the violence that children are exposed to in media is to further try and restrict their access to that media. It only makes the temptation that much greater to seek out the forbidden fruits and the rewards that much greater. It also gives media companies a pass to create even more violent forms of virtual entertainment behind the flimsy government wall of protection.

So the best gift that Hillary Clinton could possibly give to kids who love violent and sexually explicit video games? More regulations, more restrictions. It’ll add one more false barrier that will give the bodies in Washington a reason to pat themselves on the back and another opportunity to stand in front of the cameras and deal with the same non-issue again in 4 more years.