Some Games "Don't Deserve Free Speech Protection"

Oh really?

Committee Chairman Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, and others also suggested that certain explicit games don't deserve traditional free speech protections. "Building a video game around a premise based on very realistic, cold-blooded assassinations of innocent bystanders and police" is "more akin to hate speech, not free speech," he said.

-- Politicians lash out at video game industry

So, media which portrays the death of law enforcement agents or innocent children constitutes a hate crime? Does the honorable chairman even watch television? Or hell, read Shakespeare? We're to assume that it's never OK to portray the criminal?

I can see it now, thanks to Congressional oversight, the next Rockstar game will be Grand Theft Auto: Rehabilitation Clinic ... where the only possible actions will be for the player to realize his life mistakes and try to make amends. Press "A" to make an affirmation and "X" to take your methadone.

Oh wait, maybe instead it should be Grand Theft Auto: Capitol City. Instead of a life of crime within urban sprawl, the player instead trades wasteful pork barrel projects in exchange for "donations". Press "Y" to sneak in legislation on a bill to feed AIDS victims and "Z" to keep the black man down.

Seriously, we're in the age of Abramoff and Congress actually has the balls to try and tell us what's moral? Pah-lease.




tagged: politics, gaming