The most pro-business Supreme Court in the last century once again ruled against the consumer and for big business. And before I go any further, let's get one thing straight. Video games are not being made by sexless geeks in their mom's basement. These are not Kevin Smith clones toiling for years on games that they hope one day will be as good as D&D. These are the engineers and propagandists who long ago took over video gaming and rap music. This has nothing to do with the pioneers who started it, now it's about nothing else but money. The Supreme Court handed the video game makers and marketers the best Christmas present ever because now they are certain that no matter how gory or violent or perverse the game happens to be, there is nothing to stop them from marketing that game to the smallest and most vulnerable in this society. California (thanks Arnold, another project you didn't see all the way through) passed a law that would make criminals out of video store owners who sell games like GTA (lame and not that violent) COD (better but still not super violent) and the mother of them all, Mortal Kombat, to anyone under the age of 18. Of course the game makers told the high court that this isn't about keeping uber violent games away from impressionable minds, nope, this is about free speech and free expression. And the court bought that crap. They found that even though obscenity and adult entertainment can be regulated to the point of basically outlawing it in certain communities, you can't do shit about God of War being sold to your nine year old. I love how the video game lawyers compared Zombie Kill Squad to Lord of the Flies, both are violent examples of free expression. Are you fucking kidding me? There is no way that anyone who has ever read Lord of the Flies was able to visualize Piggy's death so graphically that blood shot across the horizon of the pages. No book ever written evokes the same kind of full on response that a video game causes. That's like comparing Penthouse Forum to an interactive porn movie.
So what we have here is a failure to communicate. The highest court in the land has told us that as long as there are no swinging dicks, exposed shaved twats, or booty holes of varying shapes and sizes, whatever else you want to put into your "entertainment" is okay and cannot be stopped or even slowed down by the state. For those out there who think this is about the First Amendment, I venture to say that you don't understand the meaning of freedom of speech and expression. I applaud video game companies for making the investment necessary to create games like Call of Duty but if I and the other citizens in my community think that game is too violent for our children we should have the right to ask our lawmakers to make certain that the money makers cannot simply ignore our wishes and push this on us. Again, let me repeat, if we were talking about porn this case never would have made it to the Big Nine.
I no longer dare to say "what next" because I already know what's next. Within 20 years all the maps will have to be changed so that our country is referred to as the United States of America, brought to you by Coca Cola, Microsoft and Kibbles and Bits. Let the buyer beware.
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