Vinny and TJ devour several pounds of Taco bell in an effort to secure their manhood in the first ever MoleHole Radio Taco Bell Challenge. Goggs hates everything, especially young children who climb mountains. Iron Man 2 pre-release ticket for giveaway!
Goggs is 100% Right about the supreme court case over M rated video games. When ever politicians are doing bad in the polls they find a scapegoat for the ills of society. A scapegoat that not only absolves the political figure of blame, but also lets voters off the hook for their responsibilities too. The voter gets to say to them selves “I’m not a bad parent. It’s that thing my kid likes/reads/listens to/plays with that made him/her bad.” It used to be comic books. Then it was rock and role. Next was TV. Followed by Rap music and video games. The internet is really the current but some politicians still like to go back to the video game well.
This isn’t a question if this law will lead to a slippery slope or not. This law is a big push down the hill. The argument against the voluntary rating system the game industry uses today was that a law like the one before the court now would be soon to fallow. I’m a little older than you guys, so you might not remember how we got the rating system for games in the first place. Senator Fucking Lieberman went on a massive pandering crusade over the first Mortal Kombat game. He would only show clip of Sonya (the one female character in the game) getting beat up and killed to imply that beating up women was the main point of the game. Some thing had to be done!
After a few years of Sega using blood codes that kids would memorizing before the games came out and Nintendo’s SNES becoming the Batamax of game systems for not allowing any blood or graphic violence to be shown in their games, the industry finally agreed to a voluntary rating system. Key word being voluntary. The deal was that video games were considered free speech (or at least the art and writing within the game were), but the industry agreed to a rating system so that consumers (Mainly parents that were not part of the video game generation) would know what kind of content they were buying. There is no law that says if you make a video game you have to get a game rated by the ESRB. Though if you don’t get your game rated most retailers won’t carry it in their stores.
It’s the same deal with movie ratings. The MPAA is a voluntary system run by a private sector company, but if you want the big multiplexes to show your film they want it rated by the MPAA. It’s not illegal to sell a ticket an R rated movie to some one under 18. Every once in a while a towns or cities in an effort to pander to parents will try to make laws fining theaters for letting minors in to R rated movies. These laws are quickly overturned in the courts, but by then the election is over and no one cares any more. What some theaters do to cover their ass from political and social scrutiny, is if a kid buys a ticket to a kids film and then tries to sneak into Kick-Ass the theater will have the cops arrest the kids for trespassing. The kid had permission to be in one part of the multiplex and not the other.
If the Supreme Court sides with the state of California, the game industry could just decide to not get their games rated by the ESRB. If the court actually goes as far as saying that video games must by rated by the private company that is the ESRB, it could be seen as precedent to allow government to require citizens and corporations to purchase products and services from private businesses. This would be a big step farther then even the Heath Care Mandate because the fine in for not having health care is technically a tax.
The real danger of the law that is being decided on is that it is not equating M rated content to R rated content. The law would equate M rated content to Porn and want to restrict it in a similar manner. Here is were politicians like to muddy the waters. They say how bad this stuff is for “kids” and you think of little kids. When they go to enforce a law like this, they have the cops get a seventeen year old with a beard to go by the game/book/comic book/CD. Then the cops and politicians go on TV and act like the store sold to a ten year old.
Though to play Devils Advocate for a second, I was going to finish with a paragraph about how kids playing violent video games don’t make them violent. It makes the wimpy introverted nerds. Then I remembered Goggs and Vinny playing with guns and loaded weapons during the show. Though the law before the court goes to far, the state may have a point if they played a lot of violent games in their youth. If they didn’t it’s proof positive that not only is the state of CA wrong, but kids need to play the bloodiest fucking games on the market to vent their frustrations.
Sorry for all the typos. I get a little passionate about this subject and was trying to keep it short and to the point. 😉
My Dick Pick for Iron Man 2 Tickets
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