Hillary's Games
By Marni Soupcoff
Senator Hillary Clinton doesn't want your kids playing violent video games like Grand Theft Auto. "This is a silent epidemic of media desensitization," she says, "that teaches kids it's okay to dis people because they are a woman, they're a different color or they're from a different place."
Or does Senator Clinton equate cultural insensitivity with murder? You never can tell with some of these liberals. Not that Clinton would like to be considered a liberal anymore. She is clearly attempting to dump that persona in preparation for a Presidential run in 2008.
Hence the sudden interest in video games and their pernicious influence on morality. But apparently politically correct habits die hard, leaving even an attack on assaulting the delicate sensibilities of children--a classic social conservative move--sounding more like a public service announcement against racism and sexism. ("Billy, have you been out murdering minority sex trade workers again? How many times do I have to tell you, you shouldn't murder based on gender or the color of a person's skin. Now, go out there and find some white men to kill before I ground you for your insensitivity.")
Even leaving the strange wording aside, though, the Senator's moralizing is awfully hard to take. And not because she's necessarily wrong.
There is admittedly something disturbing about little kids getting their kicks from a game that teaches them to engage in drive-by shootings and house robberies. But the Senator and her husband are not exactly the ideal people to lecture anyone about virtue, ethics, or principles. After all, the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals may not have been as fun or visually pleasing as Grand Theft Auto, but they were real.
And for any little kids paying attention, they delivered the clear message that lying and cheating is okay, so long as you can maintain a straight face while you're doing it. Coming as it did from one of the most powerful couples in the country, that was a lesson that was just as hard (perhaps harder) for parents to counter as an amoral video game full of gangbangers and drug dealers.
One therefore cringes to hear Hillary Clinton taking on the role of moral policeman for the country's youth. She has no credibility as an arbiter of right and wrong. This would not ultimately matter much if she stuck to her previous areas of interest. (Sadly, moral character generally plays a decreasingly important role in politics today.)
But it becomes a serious problem when Clinton decides, as she apparently has, to adopt the posture of a concerned moralist, mourning the country's lost family values.
Will voters actually buy the manufactured shift in priorities and perspective?
It's a little too early to say, but it seems unlikely. While Americans are strangely keen to be lectured on how to raise their kids by the likes of Oprah and Dr. Phil, they are usually less appreciative of such advice from politicians. They are therefore more apt to resent child-rearing imperatives delivered by a senator in an unhealthy marriage whose only previous loopy advice on the matter involved leaving it to a village than they are to take Hillary's newfound interest in family matters as a genuine sign that she has changed. At least I hope that's the case.
There are few more depressing thoughts than the idea of a third President Clinton, this one elected on a hypocritical platform of video game censorship and teaching kids not to dis others. So, what's the take-home lesson from Hillary Clinton's recent adoption of the violent video game issue, then?
Pass that Constitutional amendment allowing foreign born citizens to run for President as quickly as possible.
I doubt most Americans are gullible enough to swallow the idea of a new, warm and fuzzy Hillary who just wants to see that our kids grow up knowing the difference between right and wrong. But it would be best to have a guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting in the wings just in case.
Marni Soupcoff's column appears on Monday at TAEmag.com.
