Blago Thinks He's Illinois' Daddy
By Sam Bakken in News on Dec 17, 2004 9:27PM
The big Blago news this past week has been his and his wife's efforts to make it illegal for retailers to sell violent or sexually explicit video games to minors. Blagojevich has proposed two bills, "one that bans the distribution, sale, rental and availability of violent video games to children younger than 18 and another that bans the distribution, sale, rental and availability of sexually explicit video games to children younger than 18." He has even created a web site in case you didn't know that games with names like "Hitman: Blood Money" may not be appropriate for your children.
Chicagoist doesn't have kids and we're not sure where we stand on the issue. Yesterday morning we received a call from a robot conducting a survey about the issue for CBS 2. The first question was something like, "Do you think stores should sell violent or sexually explicit video games to minors?" Who can really say yes to that? Obviously the issue is making it illegal. A number of courts have ruled other attempts to ban the sale of these types of video games to minors unconstitutional.
Blago said in his press release "Parents today face unprecedented challenges in monitoring and protecting their children from harmful influences. They have to worry about a lot more than bullies and bad influences outside the home. Now, because of advances in technology, our kids have easy access to information and images inside our homes that our own parents would never have dreamed of exposing us to." It's interesting that he refers to parents twice. Shouldn't it be left to the parents? Critics also say the state would need to spend more state money (Illinois doesn't have a whole lot of expendable income these days) to create a special bureau to enforce the rule and pay for the inevitable court battles.
"JFK Reloaded", a game where the objective is to assassinate JFK, seems to be the game that pushed Blago over the edge. We're not sure about that game, except that kids probably shouldn't play it. We're not huge video game fanatics, but we'd like to see the game. We also had to buy the new Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and have been playing it daily here at the Chicagoist offices. One of our interns is playing it right now in fact. We'll admit, with shame, that one of our favorite activities in the game is to kill as many cops as possible and get the army after us. That's some bad shit. But it seems like the historical reality/significance of the events in the game may be what determines whether or not it's over the top.
Some would say these violent video games are a healthy way to statisfy society's bloodlust. But still, the Grand Theft Auto Game (where you can beat, stab or shoot an innocent grandma if it strikes your fancy) is some bad-nasty depraved stuff. JFK Reloaded seems a bit more bad-nasty and depraved because it actually happened. What about a game where you're Osama B and you have to organize a terrorist attack, learn how to fly a plane and ultimately crash a plane into the WTC? The idea has probably been discussed by video game developers somewhere, but probably won't ever be made (innappropriate yea?).
We're looking forward to some interesting discussion in the coming weeks on these issues.