Playing the Game
Hillary Clinton boldly stepped from the shadows last week to confront one of the nations most troubling problems: sex scenes in one of the Grand Theft Auto video games.Forget Eminent Domain, forget the Sudan, forget the insidious corporate machine she's been railing against for the past 12 years. Hillary Clinton is calling for the Federal Trade commission to waste time and money to improve her political career saying: "There is no doubting the fact that the widespread availability of sexually explicit and graphically violent video games makes the challenge of parenting much harder."
GTA already had a rating of M here in the US, meaning it was recommended only for audiences over 17 (like a rated R movie.) The discovery of normally hidden but unlockable content in the game requires it receive a higher rating and prompted morally courageous venues like Wal-Mart to stop selling it.
Never mind the fact that the game's plot already openly required players to sell drugs, shoot police, and pimp whores, and that those features were public knowledge from the beginning. Never mind the fact that "Sex in the City" features more sexually explicit material in a single episode than any of the short GTA clips, and while it's on the premium channel of HBO is far more accessible than any 30 second mini-game. And never mind the fact that the internet is bursting at it's seams with porn.
No, rather than standing against any real form of sexually explicit material, Senator "Middle America wins Presidencies" Clinton will try to crush a video game in order to champion herself as a warriorette for family values. It's the perfect political move: rather than taking on a TV series immensely popular with voters like "Desperate Housewives", and rather than taking on the largely unstoppable porn industry, Clinton chooses a relatively small and insignificant target, and the company will squirm and wriggle for a while until the attention goes away, and in the end Clinton can evidently claim she's fought to curb the growing trend of violence and sexuality in youth entertainment.
I'm not buying it.
posted by RJ @ 8:17 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
The game did get a new rating because of it. Now its "Adult" instead of "Mature"... so now you have to be 18 to buy it instead of 17. Good job Hillary, you saved all those impressionable 17 year olds from the decision they would have regretted by the time they turned 18.
Hillary Clinton can't win with you. Either she does something you disagree with (like attempting to nationalize health care), and you decry it as being liberal and wrong; or she does something you agree with in principle (like regulating GTA) and you chalk it up to political motives. This means that I should reject any olive branches Bush sends out to environmentalists/progressives/etc., because they're purely politically motivated, and I'm not buying them.
Here's the thing: everyone's fuss over GTA IS stupid--like you said, to attack a game for having hidden sex code in it that you need to unlock when it's already off the wall explicit is either naive or politically motivated. It's just that I don't see what's wrong with the latter--since everything politicians do is at least somewhat politically motivated, we have to bracket that off when it comes to discussing their conduct, and judge them by other criteria.
The problem is that when she 'offers an olive branch' its something stupid and worthless -- like this. If she really wants to be seen as a moderate candidate (I really think its too late for that) she has to do something with substance that pleases the other side. And her timing with horrible. We have a SCOTUS nominee, various other nominees waiting for votes, two wars, social security issues, N Korea talks, China developments, etc... and she makes the biggest issue on the Senate floor a stupid video game that she wants restricted to people who are one year older. Not exactly a move to garner praise from the right, or even moderates. Sure, there are plenty of people out there who agree with her voiced opinion about GTA and believe that it was appropriate for the Senate to get involved. But on a whole this would be like Bush making a huge deal about increasing welfare spending by .01% to give more money to Mongolian refugees. Sure, the Mongolian refugees are happy, it might be a good thing to do, but its not going to get him more support from the left because its such a small thing after he's been consistently right-wing in the rest of his policy. And if he tried to make something like that as central and pressing an issue as Hillary made the GTA stuff, everyone, right and left, would be enraged at his lack of focus on things that are of extreme importance to the nation as a whole. You can't choose some small, inconsequential issue that fits somewhere in a party's core values and think that choosing their side on that one issue is going to make them feel any different about you.
Hillary can 'win with [the right]' but she has to do something that matters. Something like this is an empty getsture that does not accomplish anything that is meaningful to the majority of the country and wasted time that might have been better spent on something more important. The legislation itself wasn't even that big of a deal, but the way she paraded it around as a pressing issue made sure that the right continued to view Senator Clinton with something less than appreciation.
We need Mongolian refugees... so we can have Mongolian barbecues.
Anyway, I totally agree that this gesture is stupid. Especially when she believes that a 17-year old girl shouldn't have to tell her parents when she gets an abortion, but GOD FORBID she see a pixelated nipple in a videogame.
Oh, and I (a republican) totally disagree with this in principle. I don't think the Government should have the ability to tell videogame manufacturers what they can or can't put in videogames. I think you are confusing this with my agreement to government censorship (in the form of not funding) an art display that does nothing more than fling excrement on a picture of Jesus.
Hillary Clinton: Here's an olive branch. I realize it's kind of small and withered, but please accept it.
jackscolon: *douses branch in gasoline and sets it on fire*
I don't mean to defend Hillary Clinton--she's an empty shell like John Kerry with no beliefs. I just thought redhurt's criticism of her action as "the perfect political move" was kind of...superfluous? Not that half the posts on my blog aren't superfluous. If it was so perfect, who's she getting through to with it? You obviously saw right through her.
Really, I guess it's because I'm sick of politicians deriding other politicians' actions as "politically motivated" instead of good, bad, wrong, right, ineffective, revolutionary, incendiary, etc. I may have unfairly chosen an almost-completely-correct redhurtian analysis as my target.
Way to stick it to Hillary, redhurt.
Hillary Clinton: "I know I've spent all my life working against most of what you believe in, but here, have this small olive branch. Did I say small? I meant huge. ITS HUGE!! I'M SAVING THE FREAKING COUNTRY HERE FOR YOU, YOU UNGRATEFUL MONGRELS! "
Us: "Whatever Hillary. Keep your freaking stick, we never wanted it to begin with. Come back if you have something that can bear fruit" (like the repeated tree analogies? ;) )
Whoever said I stood against pornography? I watch porn all the time. Besides, I spent half my time on Fable just trying to get laid...
... I don't think anyone insinuated you stand against porn, Jack. Thanks for the personal info, though ;)
There's very little about this that I agree with in principle. I'm not for kids playing sexually driven video games, but I'm not for having the government enforce a strange and useless rating system either. It's not an olive branch - an olive branch would be passing legislation to implement protocols limiting porn on the internet or TV. This isn't an attempt to reach out - it's an attempt to mislead; to draw attention towards something insignificant in order to improve her image. Spend government money on improving our country and don't call the FTC every time you want a publicity boost. Spend your own money on that, embezzeled or otherwise.
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