Wednesday April 26, 2006

Esteemed colleague nietzreznor links to an article on his blog detailing legislation in Oklahoma known as the “games as porn” bill. Well, it would seem to me that you could only treat video games as pornography if, um, they included pornography, but that’s neither here nor there. Regardless, the bill would ban the sale of video games to those under 18 that are judged to be “harmful to minors.” The most mind-blowing part of this, though, is that the burden would appear to be on the video game manufacturer to prove that their game is not harmful. The definition of “harmful to minors,” according to the bill, is that “the material or performance lacks serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value for minors.” Um, they’re VIDEO GAMES. Good gravy. If we applied this to other children’s products, we’d have to ban sales of Candy Land and Super Soakers — it doesn’t seem like they meet any of those exceptions either. The idea that kids can only buy video games that are arbitrarily judged to be good for them by some government commission somewhere seems so completely ridiculous that I can’t believe this bill might actually pass. (Coming soon: government oversight of news outlets … and the Internet! It’s for the children, you see.) One would think that this atrocity couldn’t possibly hold up to judicial scrutiny, but at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised by much of anything.

Also: Tony Snow, former Fox News commentator (and speechwriter for Bush 41, as well as occasional fill-in for Rush Limbaugh), was installed today as the new White House press secretary. This ought to be interesting to watch, since Mr. Snow certainly appears to be a conservative with actual small-government principles who has frequently disagreed with the President, saying outright last Veterans Day that “George Bush has become something of an embarassment.” He was always a welcome contrast to the right-wing shillness of, well, the rest of Fox News. Apparently Mr. Snow will be a more integral part of the administration than either of the two previous press secretaries; hopefully he will actually make sense when he addresses the beltway media. Or not. I’m surprisingly hopeful in any event.