So, the House of Representatives is now involved in protecting us from ourselves, passing a resolution to recommend to the FTC that they look into what the hell Rockstar was thinking. Idlenews has the best analysis and commentary. And for those who want to blame liberals or conservatives, the vote was 355 to 21.

Clearly, the logic is that games are kid things, and kids don’t vote. This logic is staggeringly wrong – the average age of a gamer is 30, says the ESA — and the whole trail of politician-think would be hilarious if it wasn’t threatening my rent check.

Personally, I liked this editorial, with this particularly amusing piece of snark.

I’d like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility has captured the attention of millions of kids — a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing. I’m talking, of course, about high school football.

The writer is Steven Johnson, the author of “Everything Bad is Good For You”, and he goes on to point out other steady streams of ammunition against the bugbears in the closet.

According to Duke University’s Child Well-Being Index, today’s kids are less violent than kids have been at any time since the study began in 1975….The national carjacking rate has dropped substantially since “Grand Theft Auto” came out….Math SAT scores have never been higher; verbal scores have been climbing steadily for the last five years; nearly every indicator in the Department of Education study known as the Nation’s Report Card is higher now than when the study was implemented in 1971.

Many people have pointed out Mark Morford’s editorial on the matter, which is almost identical, I note, to the Best Page In the Universe’s take on the matter, which is ‘who the hell put sex in my mindless violence? While both are amusing reads, they both go back to the tired argument of why something is rated M for violence but adding sex makes it AO. It’s not sex that makes it AO, it’s sex PLUS VIOLENCE that makes it AO. Think of it as the last greasy fry in the gullet of a boxer that knocks him out of his weight class.