Washington Times Reports on Cease Fire Between Senators, Game Industry

Washington Times Reports on Cease Fire Between Senators, Game Industry

December 8, 2006
Aside from an Associated Press report, there has so far been little notice paid in the mainstream media to yesterday's surprising announcement that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman are backing an ESRB initiative designed to increase parental awareness of video game ratings.

The conservative Washington Times, however, offers some analysis in this morning's edition, quoting Sen. Clinton as saying:
These PSAs are a great gift for parents. They provide information to help parents provide a healthy environment for their children... Parents are really hungry for this information.

The Times spoke to Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, who credited Sen. Clinton for making a politically savvy decision to partner with the game industry on the parental awareness campaign:
It's a very adroit move to find an issue in which she can work with Mr. Lieberman after this past election... The idea of sort of being offended by some of the coarsening elements of the culture is not as ideological as people assume. It would not surprise me if Mrs. Clinton had just sort of seen some of the violence and was offended by it.

Another conservative, Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation, added:
I don't assume that everything Senator Clinton is doing is political, but clearly, because so many parents care about this issue, this would certainly help for Senator Clinton to promote the perception that she is a moderate Democrat.

Comments

It just seems so damn flip-flopish, to go from supporting a press release that calls on the gaming industry to stop release games that encourage kids to become cannibals (in Lieberman's case), or denouncing the ESRB as "broken" (in Clinton's case), to actively partnering with the ESRB to help educate parents.

I mean I should be happy and all, but it seems more like a marriage of convenience than any change of policy. NIMF pulled the rug out from under their "teh retailers are teh evil!" leanings, so the only way to get anything done now is to do these PSAs. I mean your call to slap around retailers hardly has support if a national parent watchdog group drops the whole "retailers are bad" deal and starts questioning whether parents truly care about what their kids are watching/playing...
Thier siding with the ESRB because they saw the light.

Watch out, Censorcrats. It's only a matter of time.....
I think its a smart move. Game legislation fails at every turn. Clinton & Lieberman finally got that if they want to change what they do not like about the Game Industry they are going to need to do it with the help of the the Game Industry.

It is a shame it took this long for the idea to get through those thick skulls.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting the articles, but it seems like the writers are heaping an awful lot of praise on HC for this move. I guess it looks like she's breaking new ground to them, but from where I'm sitting this should have been done years ago. Just because your 45/100 score was the best in your class of retards doesn't make you a genius to the rest of us.
I think it's good that now maybe, just maybe, senators will stop attacking the video game industry. I have mostly bashed Jack Thompson because, from what I've seen on other web sites, I get the impression that Jack Thompson is keeping this fight against video games alive. It doesn't make sense that right now America is at war with Iraq and other problems are happening around the world, yet they keep attacking video games on Jack Thompson's whims. Washington D.C. has no place in the video game industry and they need to stop attacking the video game industry just because Jack Thompson wants them to.
Daniel

This entire issue is much larger than JT. He jumped on the band wagon with school shootings. Please, stop making jack out to be bigger than he is.
@ Brokenscope

I admit it. Jack Thompson didn't start the controversy against the video game industry. That was Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl, who started complaining about the violence in Mortal Kombat. However, Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl have, for the most part, moved on. They really don't make attacking the video game industry their carreer. When I read about controversy in video games, the name Jack Thompson keeps coming up. He's the one who keeps it going.

It's bigger than Jack Thompson, but it would probably end if Jack Thompson gave it up because, as I said up there, many more important things are going on in the world and the government wouldn't care about video games if Jack Thompson didn't keep saying that these games are murder simulators and that they're destroying the minds of young people. If he stopped with all that garbage, then the government would pay attention to more important issues and the whole video game issue would fade into the past. In conclusion,while he didn't start it, he is the most vigorous enemy of video games out there.
That's a load of bull. He could stop and it'd still go on. Learn politics; "Hey, if this can get me votes, I'll do it!" or "If it gets me publicity with my target group, sure!"

He didn't start it, he just jumped in and started screaming out from inside the box. He is not its lifeforce. It will go on with or without him. As long as there are people who think violent video games affect our generation, it will continue.
People will be screaming about it forever, just like they scream about TV.

GamePolitics ShoutBox

Posted 11/07/09 at 11:33pm
JDKJ: BREAKING: In photo-finish at the wire, House passes health care reform bill. Relatedly, in fit of pique, Austin Lewis kicks innocent dog.
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:27pm
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:26pm
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:23pm
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:18pm
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
Posted 11/07/09 at 03:34pm
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:58am
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:56am
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:51am
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:48am
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:11am
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:07am
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:05am
JDKJ: I'm no psychologist, but I'm told that crazy people have a tendency to do crazy things.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:03am
chadachada321: Whoops, was out of the convo for awhile. I do wonder what type of ammo he used etc, but the real issue is WHY he did it, not HOW
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:56am
JDKJ: But if it turns out that they actually did, they'll have Hell to pay.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:45am
JDKJ: And I'd tend to rule out the possibilty of FN Herstal supplying restricted ammunition to someone merely because they're ordering it from a military base.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:37am
JDKJ: I know you don't leave your gated community and get around much in dark alleys, so you may be surprised to learn that there's this thing called "the black market" where, if you've got enough money, ain't too much of anything which can't be bought.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:36am
Austin_Lewis: Or, maybe he or someone else at the base ordered the SS190 from FN Herstal.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:32am
Austin_Lewis: the hands of private owners. They run about 300 dollars minimum for a box of 50, and boxes of AP 5.7 are extremely scarce, mainly residing in the hands of Class III stores or individuals who for one reason or another got a demo box of it.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:30am
Austin_Lewis: There are other firearms that fire the 5.7. However, I too would like to know where he got the ammo and what kind was used. Maybe Hasan, planning not to live through this, went out and bought one the boxes of SS190 that are floating around in
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