Senatrix Clinton: Protecting the Children, 24/7

Democrats are always staunch defenders of a near-absolute right to free speech, except when they're running for something:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday sharply criticized the sex and violence in video games and other entertainment directed at children, calling the prevalence of such images an epidemic.

Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat from New York, also called on industry leaders to create a uniform ratings system that would warn parents about sex and violence in video games, television and other forms of entertainment that children might be exposed to. By contrast, parents now look to a patchwork of ratings systems that differ from one sector of the industry to another.

This is a Dick-Morris-style microinitiative. She's not proposing anything really new; we already have ratings for TV and records and videogames. She just wants to homogenize the various systems.

Which is sort of a good idea. A very, very small good idea. A good, but almost wholly useless idea.

Yeah, there's some minor advantage to having cross-media standardization of ratings; but the ratings, different as they are, aren't exactly as obscure as a Sanskrit translation of Beowolf.

TV-17 means that people under 17 are cautioned against watching this show. "E" meens for everyone, "T" means Teen, and M means "Mature" as far as videogames. And in case you weren't sure what "E" or "T" or "M" meant, it says so right under the big letter.

This isn't exactly bewildering.

Senatrix Clinton then discusses these sorts of warnings in the only manner in which a liberal feels safe in discussing them: as a public health threat, citing "stuides" that show that people who, say, play Half-Life 2 are more likely to start abducting railroad hobos and lobotomizing them into Roger-Miller-singin' humanoid sex-robots:

At a forum held by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Mrs. Clinton cited studies indicating that children who are exposed to graphic images of violence display more aggressive behavior.

"It is a little frustrating when we have this data that demonstrates there is a clear public health connection between exposure to violence and increased aggression that we have been as a society unable to come up with any adequate public health response," she said.

Oh, have a nice tall glass of STFU juice. If you want to play the morality card, be a man and f'n' play the morality card. Don't do it via this double-talk about a "public health response."

Not an outrage. Just a continuing source of annoyance.

I suppose that's her master plan.

Senatrix Hillary Rodham-Clinton For President

No longer a nitrous-oxide fueled bitch-machine on wheels; now just very annoying in an electorally-viable fashion.

posted by Ace at 04:19 PM

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