If Not for the Children, then for the Zombies
You know, our busy urban lives are fraught with so many seemingly unsolvable troubles that it's nice to hear, now and then, that our leaders are tackling problems that don't actually exist. The nonexistant ones are so much easier to claim to have solved, after all.
We're informed by the Richmond Review that the California Psychological Association has named its "Legislator of the Year 2004." The lucky winner is State Assembly Speaker pro Tem (whatever that means) Leland Yee, and the CPA is just crazy about him. Leland, as you may recall from your lengthy perusal of California legal texts, is the man behind AB 1972 and AB 1973 which sought to force retailers to sell violent video games in a manner similar to how pr0n is sold - on a high shelf, obscured behind something opaque, and possibly surrounded by swarms of killer bees (A watered-down version of AB 1973 was signed by the Governator, who currently appears in such violent video games as Terminator 3). The International Game Developers Association, you may be surprised to hear, is slightly peeved.
In particular, the bills focussed on first-person shooters, the kind of game in which you see out of your character's eyes as you run around blowing crap up. Leland was concerned, he said, that the games trained kids to stalk and kill people: "no more of these video games to help our kids become shooters," he said.
We of course couldn't agree more, due to our receipt of massive financial kickbacks from the Zombie, Evil Robot, and Hitler lobbies. They're the real victims here, people. Of course kids will always have a burning desire to stalk and shoot things, but do their targets have to be poor, innocent Metroids? And for that matter, why are these kids spending all day sitting inside? Why don't they go out, get some sun, and shoot things in real life? It was good enough for our ancestors, damnit.
So anyway, if you're voting in assembly district 12 you'll be seeing Cap'N Yee's name on the ballot alongside his competitors: Howard Epstein (R) and Chris Madden (L). Sure, it's easy (and fun!) for us to be apathetic about voting when boring stuff is at stake - health care, marriage, schools, blah blah blah - but when it comes to video games, we just can't get to the voting booths early (and often!) enough. We'll see you at the polls, you rebel scum - vote or die!
SFist Matt Baume, contributing.