Speedkill

I haven’t discussed a Mona Charen column all summer, so I’d better get to it. Today in the Missoulian it’s “Grand Theft Auto and us.” Actually, that’s not the title in the Missoulian, but whatever.

The best-selling video game in the United States last year (5.2 million copies) was a piece of work called “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” The National Institute on Media and the Family described its content as follows: “Raunchy, violent and portraying just about every deviant act that a criminal could think of in full, living 3D graphics. Grand Theft Auto takes the cake again as one of the year’s worst games for kids. The premise — restore respect to your neighborhood gang as you take on the equally corrupt San Andreas police.”

Well, yes, you wouldn’t want your kids to be anywhere near this thing, but frankly, it’s disgusting for anyone. Game play in the San Andreas and earlier versions of Grand Theft Auto also features buying and selling drugs, stealing cars, foul language, racial slurs, running down pedestrians, attacking people with chainsaws, sexual jokes, evading and killing police officers, and feeding people into a wood chipper. (No, my son does not own the thing.)

Meh, boring hysteria combined with the trademark lack of understanding of video games by old people. But, kids shouldn’t be playing San Andreas, so there isn’t much to complain about here.

None of the foregoing was enough to cause a stir. But one day, a Manhattan grandmother bought the game for her 14-year-old grandson and was shocked to discover that a modification of GTA, downloadable from the Internet, permitted him to see graphic sex acts on the game. (In the normal version of the game, sex is offstage.) Initially, GTA’s creator, Rockstar, denied responsibility for what hackers would do to its product once it had entered the stream of commerce and took refuge under the mantle of “art.” The company was “disappointed by comments that misrepresent Grand Theft Auto, detracting from the innovative and artistic merits of the game. Unfortunately, the recent confusion only serves to suggest that games do not deserve the same treatment as other forms of creative expression.” Within a few days, that statement was rendered “inoperative” when it became clear that the modification only unlocked material already lurking in the game itself. Eric Pfeiffer of National Review Online notes that skilled players of the Playstation 2 and Xbox versions of the game could unlock the sexual content without a special download from the Internet.

Hmm, I haven’t actually heard that. Can you actually unlock the content on the PS2? Yep. Granted, Charen’s “skilled” claim seems misleading, considering you need cheat codes to unlock the minigame. I should note that cheat codes for this content would change my opinion from a couple weeks ago. I’m not sure if the PC version has the cheat codes, however. Moving on.

Manhattan grandma is suing Rockstar, which has slapped an Adults Only label on the game and apologized, sort of. Acknowledging that they knew the content was there, company spokesman Rodney Walker explained, “We didn’t want it in the final version so we followed the industry practice of breaking up the code and hiding it.” Oh.

What is Charen objecting to here? Beats me; as I said before, if the content the code creates is inaccessible, it makes a big difference.

So, a kindly 85-year-old lady has no qualms about purchasing a gang-glorifying, violence-soaked, sick entertainment for her teenage grandson, but is shocked when it turns out to contain explicit sex? Wasn’t the rest enough? Sigh.

Well, I can’t say I disagree here. To consider sex worse than violence is ridiculous.

Well, yes, we should. But surely we can find a better spokesman than Sen. Clinton. In the first place, we know the Clinton technique quite well by now. Make conservative-sounding noises (remember “End Welfare As We Know It”?) and then hand power to the very liberals who created the mess. Second, the senator’s husband is a national dirty joke who did as much to debase the culture as any video game squared. Finally, the problem is not retailers selling directly to children. That rarely happens. In fact, adults are buying these games for kids.

Ah, the partisan hack returns. Clinton getting a BJ in the White House is more of a debasement than widespread interactive simulations of similar and worse acts? What the hell? Not that I agree video games are really “debasing” culture, but can’t these people at least get their outrage priorities straight?

What would Charen like us to do about adults buying these games for kids?

Bill Bennett and Sen. Joe Lieberman had a better idea a decade ago. Shame them. Shame the manufacturers, the retailers, and yes, the parents who buy the trash. Put their faces on television. Let them feel the wrath of the majority of parents (liberal and conservative) who truly detest what this anything goes culture has wrought.

Parents I get, but the manufacturers and retailers? What do you want them to do? Stop making the games? Oh, right, of course you do. Some people would be satisfied with educating adults about the games and allowing them to make their own decisions about their children’s activities. Those people are reasonable. Apparently, Charen doesn’t fall into that category. I think we knew that already, though.