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Hillary Clinton slams GTA News
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New York senator and former first lady Hillary Clinton has launched an attack on violent videogames, singling out Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto titles as a "major threat" to morality.
Clinton, who is reportedly planning to seek the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2008 election, has aligned herself with hardline right-wing Republican senators in order to pressure Congress into researching the impact of electronic media on children.
"Children are playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them," she said in a statement on the issue. "This is a silent epidemic of media desensitisation that teaches kids it's OK to diss people because they are a woman, they're a different colour or they're from a different place."
She wants a $90 million investigation to be launched into the impact of games and other electronic media on the "cognitive, social, emotional and physical development" of children, according to a Sunday Times report.
Clinton has been joined in her attack on violent games by Republican senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum - the latter of whom is best known for his outspoken stance on homosexuality, which he is accused of comparing to bestiality in public statements.
American political analysts have noted that Clinton has taken on some increasingly right wing stances on domestic issues in recent months, in an effort to win support from traditionally Republican voters in the next presidential race, with videogames being merely the latest political kicktoy to be adopted by the ambitious senator.
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Royal Fool
29/03/05 @ 17:29
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Wow... and when I thought U.S. politics just couldn't get any more stupid.
Is this seriously what they are focusing their efforts on? Christ... |
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Wouldn't it be fan-diddily-tabulous(sp?) if the results of such an investigation were:
Well games are just games, and if your kids are already a bit unstable playing these games hour after hour will not help. Parents should actually talk to their children every now and then to find out what their current state of mind is. I can see the Daily Mail readers going ... "Yeah, the report says is bad our kids are exposed to this extreme filth (reads actual report), Oh... Err... BOOKS, they're the real thread BURN THEM!" |
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captain-future
29/03/05 @ 18:07
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Well that makes Schwarzenegger look like a leftwing politician, isn't it.
After Al Gore's wife tried to ban rap music (BTW: that's why your have now this stickers "EXPLICIT CONTENT" on the cds) that just the next crazy thing in the US. |
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Thank god all we have to do is ban computer games. That way we don't have to address poverty and class stratification and all that stuff. We won't need to pay taxes to help the poor or any of that filthy commie muck!
Meanwhile, in a US weapons lab: "Putting this in this with this will totally make the killing better!" "You're awesome." "I know." |
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George Roper
29/03/05 @ 18:20
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Guys, no matter how much you sugar it, GTA is a game that encourages violence in order to gain money, wealth and power, at the expense of other peoples lives, whether they be good, evil or indifferent. Not only this, but it's setting almost mirrors what's actually going on in our world today.
It's not a game about taking down Demons spewing out of Hell, on Mars. It's not a game about bringing down the facist regimes of City 17, policed by a brutal, inhuman, police force who are suppressing the innocent citizens. It's not a game about bagging another frag in a futuristic tournament against cybernetically enchanced combat machines. It IS a game that both promotes and encourages the use of violence, including homicide and murder, in the context of a real-world setting and in the same way as it's actually happening on the streets halfway across the world. I wonder if all you guys would feel the same if someone in your family had been the victim of a drive-by shooting, robbery or just plain old on-the-street violence for the sake of it. 'nuff said. |
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Universal Hamster
29/03/05 @ 18:33
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Nuff said in the dumbest comment on the page, i think.
The point you made was fine George Roper, up until the last part. Yes, GTA is a violent game, theres no denying that, but if you think that someone being killed in GTA and someone being killed in the real world are the same thing, you really need to be kept away from the game yourself. The key thing to remember is that the game is not real events taking place. And is GTA really that different from Halflife and unreal tournament and so forth? Sure the settings are not the same, but they all promote violence. Violence is how you interact with the world in Halflife, there is no other option. Perhaps GTA is less of a negative influence, as there are many missions that involve delivering things etc. You cant go get a bite to eat and play pool in Halflife. You can in GTA. Its not all murdering prostitutes. (Something that I have never once done in a GTA game. Sometimes i wonder if these politicians are talking about the same game, they make GTA sound like the Hooker Hunting Sim)
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most recently on 29/03/05 @ 19:49
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" Well that makes Schwarzenegger look like a leftwing politician, isn't it. "
Pro gay, pro abortion, hell, he's practically a comunist! ;) ;) ;) Senator Santorum makes such retarded comments that he's got something extremly gross named after him. Look up his name in Google, although that's defenitly NSFW!
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most recently on 29/03/05 @ 19:43
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so she's not just saying "ban this sick filth" but lets spend 90 MUSD on looking into whether this sick filth should be banned.
i don't think you could ask more of a (possible) american presidential candidate. and what if it is objectively shown that those games (while great and my favourites) indeed have adverse effects on kids and/or teens?
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most recently on 29/03/05 @ 19:45
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I think books touch the deeper and darker parts of the human mind than a game ever will.
That said, The Bible celebrates the killing of an entire world population by the protagonist, incest, homophobia, racism, sexism etc., but doesn't even have a certificate. Yet this book is force-fed to young impressionable minds by these very right-wingers. |
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The Old Bill
29/03/05 @ 20:03
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"Yet this book is force-fed to young impressionable minds"
Mate, people have been doing that since its conception. What does that have to do with it? |
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Tweakmonkey
29/03/05 @ 21:44
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There goes my respect for Mrs Clinton. I wonder how many people bought the game and how many after playing it thought it should be banned. Not many I presume. Democrat? pfft
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>Mate, people have been doing that since its conception. What does that have to do with it?
Just noting how intolerance and hatred, that inevitably leads to violence against fellow men, can come from absolutely anywhere. Even the supposed ultimate source of moral guidance that feeds the minds too many Americans. What concerns me is how games that depict war so acurately are never seen as currupting young minds. But of course, killing 'rag heads' and 'commies' will never be as harmful to children as running over cartoon-like representations of hookers in a fantasy environment... |
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George Roper, I'm sorry to say that I think you are talking out of your arse.
One little trick you tried out there, and one that gets used a lot in anti-videogame discourse is crowbarring phrases like "GTA is a game that encourages violence..." in a rather disingenuous and intentionally vague manner. Let's be real for a minute - GTA is a game that encourages VIDEOGAME violence. Play violence. A two year old boy playing toy soldiers in his back garden understands the difference, so you really should too. People who do not understand the difference between violent role play and real actual violence are usually considered to be sociopaths - and there is not a shred of credible medical evidence to suggest that such sociopathic tendencies are aroused or fostered due to playing videogames. Furthermore, your use of the term "promotes" is highly suspect, and a bit of a leap of logic. Accordingly, a vast quantity of modern literature and popular culture could be accused of "promoting violence" by virtue of representing it. It's a silly, unhelpful perspective and not one conducive to real discussion on the matter. A kid will find worse nightmares from switching on the news, or the violence in history books at the library than from GTA. Ultimately this is just more political fodder, just like rap music in the 90s.
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most recently on 30/03/05 @ 11:06
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3william56
30/03/05 @ 04:52
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Personally, I reckon her husband's roving whanger was a bigger threat to general morality than GTA. Maybe if ol'Hilly spent more time takin' care of Billy's bizness, and less time jumping on idiot bandwagons, there wouldn't be such a demand for intern dress Stain Devils.
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A "major threat"to morality". Well, that was her husband during his tenure at the White House. Unjust sanctions against Iraq, Bombing the shit out of Serbia in order tp privatise their oil industry,etc. Maybe she should take a look in the mirror and question her own sense of moral values, before sticking the boot in.
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sir_tripod
30/03/05 @ 08:08
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[song src="South Park: The Movie"]
Blame Canada! Blame Canada! It seems that everything went wrong since Canada came along... [/song] Why don't they look at HOW children are getting hold of these games, then they might start to do something positive for this "problem". |
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"I think books touch the deeper and darker parts of the human mind than a game ever will. "
Games, as a medium, are still pretty young. Games affect us in a different way than books, movies, music etc. but that's not to say that they cannot be as deeply affecting as a book. That said, Postal 2 is hardly going to make my point, but like I say, it's a young medium. We have a lot of possibilities to grow into, and considering the current state of the industry, that will take a great deal of time. Err. Sorry. Side track. |
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While agreeing on most of the sensible stuff being said here, would like to point out that Gore tried to ban both rap and metal music (you know, satanic lyrics and all that). Rapper Ice-T made it easy for him to concentrate by starting his Body Count rap-metal band, responsible for the "Cop Killer" song which caused quite a controversy... don't you feel we've been through all this shit before?
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Another thing: general morality? I'm tired of these concepts.
It is immoral to lie when you're responsible for telling the truth and being straightforward due to a position of responsability. It is immoral to viciously attack a perfectly legal and valid product such as GTA:SA just because it will give you more votes, even if you are the coolest politician to appear in the American panorama for years. It is not immoral to have your dick sucked. There is nothing wrong with it. So leave Bill Clinton alone: he was a bit dumb, but he's a good chap. |
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IMHO books can be very, very disturbing (more disturbing than any videogame) because:
i) you are not in control of the process and: ii) you are transforming any images in the text completely in your own mind. Bits of American Psycho and Last Exit to Brooklyn have to be read a couple of sentences at a time with a breather inbewteen. |
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It's because parents don't buy their kids good games like Disgea (Which you can get really cheaply online now BTW, I've seen it for £12 in a few places)...
Seriously, blaming GTA is all well and good, but really - it's the parents buying their kids this stuff mainly... I for one have never really seen the appeal of Grand Theft Auto, sure as a kid the original GTA was fun in a "I-shouldn't-be-playing-this" kinda way, but even then I knew the game was a bit... well. One-sided. But are they making kids violent? I doubt it... not when people like 50 Cent make violence "cool" and bling it all up so kids look at that and think, "Yeah, see, I want all that bling so I'm gonna be a badass from now on"... (mind you, San Andreas may be arguable, it's not really anywhere near as good as Vice City or GTA3 and might make players want to throw their controllers at the wall... but I think that is about as far as it's going to push violence) |
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She should concentrate on attacking retailers and ignorant parents who give access to these games to the little ones. That's the real problem, as that is the problem with the largest scale.
One other reason, apart from the verisimilitude of GTA, is the huge numbers it has sold in. How many tens of millions of copies have sold in the series? Then compare that to any book, apart from the bloody Da Vinci Code. |
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