More Proof Congress is Out of Touch with Reality
Jun 23rd, 2006 by Brian A. Thomas
As if we needed more proof that Congress has no idea what is going on in the real world, Jon Stewart poked fun at the House of Representatives waste of tax payer dollars, hearings on the effects of video games on children. Check it out the clip at Comedy Central. Most shocking at the end is the Representative from PA who admits that rich children in the suburbs wouldn’t be effected, but poor kids will… get this, as rich kids in the suburbs don’t do drugs or steal cars as the poor kids do… I am so appalled I don’t even know what to say to that one.
Perhaps it is because of gentlmen like this that we have drug laws… You know cocaine was made illegal, not because the way white people used it, nobody had a problem with white people using it, but because people in the South were afraid of blacks on cocaine… marijuana was made illegal at the start as a way of forcing Mexican immigrants back south of the border… crack possession/distribution is punished far more than cocaine possession, despite being the same basic drug, because one appeals more to minorities than cocaine which, in general, is a rich, white person’s drug. The drug laws in this country have always had a racial motivation…
Anyhow, this isn’t another post about the horror that is the drug war in America, this is a post about Congress buying into the bull crap fed to them, since they don’t know anything themselves. They just sit around in their multi-million dollar homes, taking money from and believing the lies coming from the special interests who are willing to put the most money down on their postilion, regardless of how bad it is for the American people. The telcoms spent more money to keep net-neutrality down for the moment and won. There is another effort to insert a broadcast flag despite the harm it will cause to us citizens becaue Hollywoood and the recording industry want it. The tobacco, alcohol, clothing, pesticide and pharmaceutical companies, among others, spend tons to keep certain drugs illegal, even though some would be far more beneficial to society then their products. Then there are those who want to control everything we do, < cough > Hillary Clinton, Joe Liberman, Patriot Act backers (sadly, mostly Republicans in that regard) < / cough >, and part of that control is to control the entertainment industry. They would say, “You certainly can’t have something that may encourage free thought in a free society!”
It is simple. The video game industry has a very simple to understand rating system. Most retailers follow the ratings system, just as most movie theaters follow the movie rating system. Most of the violent video games are purchased by people over the age of 18. It isn’t like the games hide their ratings, they are huge letters, generally right on the front, far more noticeable than movie ratings on a DVD for example.
I have to agree when Jon at one point makes fun of the one guy who complains about what he watches what his kids plays, but does nothing. Again it comes down to parenting. Some people want the government to parent their kids for them, unfortunately, while these people are in the minority, they are the ones who have the government’s ears. They want to assign blame for anything kids may do wrong to people other then the kids themselves or those directly around them who could have a positive effect on their lives if they would just take action. They want to blame movies and games for Columbine, while ignoring the fact that the parents paid no attention to their kids building bombs in their home, and other actions the kids made that clearly showed that things could have been stopped ages before anything happened if they weren’t so engrossed in their own miserable lives and paid attention to their kids. These people want to blame a cartoon for a kid starting a house fire, despite the fact the kid caused several fires before that. These people don’t believe in training a child in the way they should go, but just ignore the child, and what happens happens, but if it is something bad, blame somebody else but them.
Kick them all out of Washington. Time to vote third party… for America’s sake.
Sorry to make such a downer post after such a funny video, but the fact that these idiots in Congress are spending tons of money to hold these hearings, rather then say “Hey! Idiots! There is a label on the box! Read it. Don’t but it for your kids if you don’t like it. And hey, here’s a novel idea, turn the game off if you think things are too out of hand. You are the parent. Be one.”
