Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Are Video Games Murders?

First on the list…sorry I missed last week. For that one guy (me) who checks this blog weekly hoping for a glimmer of something good and pure in this crazy mixed-up world, I apologize.

Second…this is going to be a short post. I want to talk about something that I feel strongly about. The shifting of blame from personal responsibility to pointing the finger at someone else that people in this country are so quick to initiate. Of course I’ll give some examples.

To start with I’ll talk about the music industry. Back in the 1985 we music lovers were subjected to a series of slaps in the face. With Tipper and her Spanish Inquisition-like horde of “concerned” mothers stirring up the works with the Parental Advisory Board, we saw a group of dullards raising hell about music that they didn’t even listen to. Stating that music with hard language and suggestive lyrics corrupted young minds, they set out on a witch hunt and got a law passed. Good for them. At least they took a break from fucking up their own families’ lives to shit on all the other music lovers.

Granted, the law didn’t do much to alter the mantle of heavy metal and rap music that they were aiming at…but that’s not the point. The point is that instead of looking at themselves and wondering what they were doing to make their kids misbehave and test the bounds of authority, they looked to an outside source to point the finger at so that they didn’t have to admit that they were doing something wrong. I point out the cases of Judaist Priest and Ozzy. They went through ordeals because some kids committed suicide and blamed it on the rockers. COP-OUT! The cheese had to have slid a little from the kids’ minds before they heard the music to make them take the plunge toward death. But blaming someone is easier than saying that their kids went coo-coo on their own.

This brings to mind the point of the blog…why I decided to write about this. On the news last night I saw that an eighteen year old convict shot and killed three police officers…and blamed it on a video game. BULL SHIT! You can’t blame a video game for the actions of an adult. People have to take responsibility for what they do in life. The prosecution is saying that the game where you get points for stealing cars and shooting cops inspired the kid to steal a car and shoot some cops. I played Duck Hunt when I was growing up, and I didn’t take my dad’s pistol outside and take out some sparrows. I also played Shinobi, but I didn’t go around stabbing people with ninja swords and hitting people with throwing stars. The fact is…if kids are brought up in good environment then they are able to separate fact and fantasy and the games are just fun games. To blame a video game is just to shift the blame and look at someone else to take the fall.

Plus, it seems that the families of the deceased cops are suing the game companies that sell the games. X-Box, Playstaion, and Nintendo had nothing to do with the kid shooting their fathers/husbands. They didn’t force the controller in the kid’s hands. The game systems didn’t offer a free gun with each purchase Grand Theft Auto. Place the blame where it belongs….on the guy who willfully shot and killed three people. It’s his fault, he did it. Bottom line. They just don’t want to point fingers at him because he doesn’t have any money and they can’t sue him.

So that’s what it boils down to. Money. These people want retribution (in monetary form please) for what this kid did. That must be the ticket. So I’m gonna sue McDonalds because I’m a little overweight. Damn-it. They shouldn’t make those fries look so tasty on the commercials. They gotta pay. I’m mentally scared from being fat and it’s McDonald’s fault for making commercials and selling the stuff to me when I walk in the door and hand them my money. They should check my references, cholesterol level, and blood pressure before they sell me those fries. Where’s my lawyer…..

Okay so it wasn’t a short post. I apologize again.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Preach on brother! I am tired of kids blamming parents too. When you get a certain age you know right from wrong. If america stopped trying to pease everybody and beat those little snot nose kids without going to jail we would be better off. Soon to be blogging

1:31 PM  

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