LIEBERMAN VS VIDEO GAMES, AND MORE
Installment #2 of STFMGFHFRA (see previous entry)

A week and a half ago I outlined the case against nominating Holy Joe Lieberman (D-sorta) for president. His moralizing on movies and music is more than enough to irk TFM. His record on video game violence is equally silly. From the man himself, here's a rundown of Lieberman's moralizing silliness through the years. He makes Lynne Cheney look like Ice-T.

Sure, he got the videogame industry to agree to a pretty-much voluntary ratings system. The funny thing is, apparently, that parents almost always ignore it.

Of course, with any debate over violence in the media, the central issue is the chicken-or-the-egg one, concerning a both-ways cause-effect relationship between media violence and real-life, actual violence (like, you know, the Crusades). The Mushroom, which as far as I can tell is a gamer site of some sort, has an amusing take on Lieberman and this issue.

Holy Joe should also take note that if video games are good enough for members of the Norwegian parliament, they should be good enough for him:

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- While parliament hotly debated the actions of Norwegians fighting in Afghanistan, one lawmaker passed the time by playing a war-game of his own on his handheld computer.

What Conservative lawmaker Trond Helleland, chairman of the justice committee, didn't know was that national television was taping Wednesday's heated debate and zoomed in on him from behind as he played.

Helleland and the game made national television news Wednesday and major papers on Thursday, drawing furious responses.

(...)

Helleland said he had intended to check his schedule on his Palm personal digital assistant but couldn't resist a round of Metalion, a war-game set in space that lets players shoot laser cannon at targets. He played it for about seven minutes in full view of cameras.

"This is, of course, very embarrassing and should never have happened," said Helleland, who claimed he followed most of the debate while he played the game.

(inevitable beatles-related pun: Well yeah, a Norwegian would!)

Pondering this, perhaps government assemblies around the world should adopt the "High School Math/Physics class" policy: Scientific calculators only.