• 7Nov 06

  Does this game ban make my gov't look bloated?

  (This was originally written for a more general audience, but I thought you might find it of interest.)
  
  As today's U.S. midterms come and go, what ranks among your most pressing topics in American politics? Health care? The surging national debt? Public education inequality? For far too many opportunistic representatives around the country, it's the scourge of video games.
  
  Politicians have attempted to ban video games, an evolving but stigmatized form of entertainment and literature, for more than a decade. And in a dozen or so cases, judges in Illinois, Washington, Alabama, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana and elsewhere have struck down politicians' efforts for offending the First Amendment. Have hundreds of wasted man hours and millions of flubbed taxpayer dollars changed their minds? Not at all.
  
  Fred Morgan is a Republican representative in the Oklahoma House, and he's the latest politician who wants to tell you how to live your life. Morgan concocted, the state legislature passed and the Democratic governor signed a "games-as-porn" bill to ban "obscene" games in Oklahoma. Morgan is an ingenious fellow -- the bill, HB3004, shamelessly borrows language from a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that uses "contemporary community standards" to judge obscenity and pornography. Knowing that other game bans have fallen due to First Amendment concerns, Morgan is framing his bill to withstand judicial scrutiny.
  
  Morgan told GameSpot it "was a way of setting community standards on what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. ... There are social issues that are bothering the American public. One of the things that came out in this debate is that we don't want Hollywood values being determined for Oklahoma."
  
  HB3004 was to go into effect Nov. 1, but a legal appeal by the game industry means a judge will decide the would-be law's fate.
  
  Remember in the mid-1990s when only Democrats, notably Connecticut Sen. Joseph Liebermann, championed the anti-game movement? Now pandering "values" Republicans have jumped on the bandwagon. If there is one thing U.S. pols can agree on -- one issue that can bring about bipartisan support in an otherwise polarized, post-Sept. 11 nation -- it may be restricting your right to think for yourself when buying a video game.
  
  Isn't it nice to know our leaders' priorities are straight?
  
  The 10th Amendment's states'-rights philosophy, which Morgan uses to justify his ban, should be a bastion of liberty. But for all of American history, politicians have perverted it to support wicked local "values" destructive to liberty, most notably slavery. Morgan's bill invokes states' rights and shifts the focus to violently and sexually explicit games as though they run rampant. But where are they? Not in the American marketplace.
  
  Since 1994, only 23 games in the U.S. have received the game industry's highest rating, Adults Only, according to the ESRB. Only 15 percent of all games sold in 2005 were rated Mature, the equivalent of the movie industry's R rating. Nearly all retail stores -- including Wal-Mart, GameStop and EB Games, which together control about 50 percent of the retail game market -- refuse to sell AO-rated games. Violence in video games is prevalent (as it is in movies and primetime network TV), but sex is not.
  
  And it takes more than a leap of faith to link video games with pornography than with movies, TV or books. Somewhere along the line, HB3004 will die a straightforward, predictable death at the hands of a judge who follows judicial precedent. Morgan's constituents -- who will end up footing the bill for the legal appeals -- should not forgive their representative.
  
  Why, then, are pols so eager to ban games? Morgan and others are stuck in the mind-set that games are for kids (much like Trix are for kids). But they're wrong. In 2005, the average game player was 33 years old, and 69 percent of all heads of American households played games, according to the ESA. The younger generations that picked up game controllers in the 1980s and ‘90s aren't letting go. But poor marketing on the part of video game companies has helped ingrain into Americans the biased idea that games are for kids. Take a trip across the Pacific to Japan or South Korea, where games aren't just accepted, they're embraced. Koreans treat a star game player like he's Michael Jordan. But Korea's glitzy, social acceptance is America's dorky underground. Here, fan conventions stock booths with comic books, sci-fi novels, games and other nerd media practically holding hands.
  
  It's easy to see why video games are the latest in a long line of repressed media. But that doesn't make it acceptable.
  
  Americans: Visit GamePolitics for a good summary of the politicans who face reelection today.
  • Posted Nov 7, 2006 2:44 pm PT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 23Oct 06

  Reuters, statistics and ****

  Since when have highly biased, voluntary, Internet-based polls been a valid source of statistics for a news story?
  
  In a story via Yahoo News ("Dad pulls gun on son's football coach," Oct. 23), a Reuters reporter cited an online Web poll (see "Hot Topic Poll 1") in a story about a father who pulled a gun on his son's football coach. After running down the man's charges, Reuters says parents' behavior at sporting events is coming under "scrutiny" lately, adding:
  
  

  An Internet straw poll of nearly 3,000 by the U.S. Web-based Center for Sports Parenting (http://www.internationalsport.com/csp/index.cfm) found that 85 percent of the participants had witnessed parents or coaches becoming verbally abusive during games. Forty percent had seen physical abuse.

  
  The poll on the Center for Sports Parenting's Web site is one that anyone using the Internet can vote on. It asks, "Have you, as a sports parent, ever witness (sic) another parent or coach becoming verbally abusive during game?" The poll had received 3,029 when I found it. According to the poll, 85.5 percent said yes and 14.5 percent said no.
  
  The same Web site features a poll, on the same page, in which nearly 90 percent of the respondents said student-athletes do better on their schoolwork because they participate in sports (see poll No. 4).
  
  Right.
  
  The Reuters-cited stat already cannot be considered serious -- flaws in the sample and selection amount its scientific validity to nothing -- but the response to poll No. 4 should confirm that this center's Web-based poll data is unreliable.
  
  Web-based polls are for humor or entertainment. Ino no way are they are fit for an otherwise serious news story.
  • Posted Oct 23, 2006 6:10 pm PT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 17Oct 06

  This has nothing to do with video games, part 2

  (This is another editorial I wrote for a journalism class. It has absolutely nothing to do with video games, so read at your own caution. It's about the banning of skinny runway models in Spain. Don't worry: A video-game-related editorial will come in a few weeks.)
  
  Thomas Jefferson's "all men are created equal" may be the most well-known yet incorrectly interpreted American axiom in history. Applied correctly, and it guarantees what everyone has from birth -- natural equal rights. But irresponsible applications, holding that people should be equal, strip people of their innate virtues, rendering humankind faceless and featureless.
  
  In early September, the Spanish government chose to incorrectly apply the famous declaration. A regional government in Madrid banned female models whose body-mass indexes fell under 18 from taking part in Pasarela Cibeles, the Spain fashion week. The Anorexia and Bulimia Association in Spain urged Spanish legislators, if fashion designers refused the new rules, to pass state laws banning thin models from the government-sponsored show.
  
  While well intentioned, the government's dismissal of individual rights in favor of groupthink "protections" is a clumsy, broad attack on the liberty and free speech of fashion designers and women.
  
  Spain said the thin-model ban will "help ensure public opinion does not associate fashion" with eating disorders. At uncritical glance, that reason seems legitimate. The Ministry of Health said the nation was experiencing an "epidemic" in 1999, when 100,000 14- to 24-year-old girls in Spain had an eating disorder, or were likely to develop one. Never mind that that number only implicates 0.5 percent to 2 percent of all 14- to 24-year-olds in Spain -- well below epidemic proportions. Never mind that that the inclusion of the group of girls "at high risk of developing" an eating disorder, which cannot be calculated with certainty, involves a subjective assessment that could only inflate the total.
  
  Anthony Pernas, a Spain fashion week designer, didn't lambaste the ban, even though it forced him to replace 18 models at his Madrid show. "It gave us problems, but look, this industry sets an example to young women," Pernas told Reuters. "We want to project a healthy image, so I'm not against the measures." Of course he is not. Now that Madrid's government sets the rules, it is like a dictatorial referee, able to change the rules when it wants; it could oust Pernas or any other designer from the fashion economy's largest event. The extent of the damage is irrelevant, because a government rarely gives up power once it has seized it.
  
  The fashion industry, instead, should have the right to outlaw from their shows those who break the rules, not those who look like they break the rules. Like sports athletes, models must work to condition their bodies for professional competition. For athletes, cheating is steroids; for models, eating disorders and illegal drugs. Allowing designers to control their shows maximizes everyone's liberty -- not a superficial governmental umbrella, eerily similar to racial profiling, that punishes both the abusers and the innocent.
  
  Luckily, there is good news in Europe, when organizers of London's fashion week rejected the government's call to invoke a similar ban. Madrid can learn a thing or two from the English capital: London's fashion week, like others in U.S. cities, is controlled by a non-profit, non-governmental body, the British Fashion Council. (Most American shows are run by for-profit marketing companies.) Had the show been in the "people's" hands, however, British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell's urging that "organizers of London Fashion Week (should) do the same" as in Spain could have been enough to warrant censorship. It was in Spain. The counter-examples in London and Madrid should guide designers to distance themselves from government, or face censorship.
  
  There is another side to the argument. Critics argue that the fashion industry glorifies the unattainable, encouraging impressionable girls to go to drastic measures to look like the fashion idols. But if such a small percentage of young girls, let alone the entire Spanish population, are affected, why is action necessary? If the words of Pernas, the fashion designer, are genuine, then it is an encouraging step a designer is taking toward social consciousness. But he shouldn't be forced by the government to do so.
  
  Despite the good intentions, the bans are more a restriction of freedom of expression than anything else. Some may not like the "speech" of a fashion show, which highlights who is wearing the clothing as much as the garments themselves, but it must be allowed, as other unpopular opinions such as Nazism and racism are.
  
  Unfortunately for the Spanish government, not everyone is the same. The Madrid fashion week bans are simply the latest extension of the equality-versus-freedom political conundrum. If diversity makes humankind beautiful, it should be embraced -- and fashion designers should have the liberty to choose who wears their clothing. Ideally, designers would be more responsible about whom they deem beautiful, yet they also shouldn't have to by law. Among the controversy, there is one constant: Unless the fashion industry wants its liberty revoked in the future, it should get its business away from government.
  • Posted Oct 17, 2006 1:31 pm PT
  • Category: Editorial
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