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Hillary, GTA, and High School Football
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Jul 27, 2005 12:00 PM
from the worth-your-time dept.
from the worth-your-time dept.
The LA Times is running a really worthwhile story discussing the recent attack on video games in congress. It talks about GTA, the decline in youth violence, and mentions that football actually encourages real aggression, causes real injuries, and is treated totally differently. It's worth a read. Unfortunately I'm fairly certain that very few U.S. Senators are listening over the sound of hype.
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Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
"Think of the Children" has been a rallying cry for as long as there's been politics. It's what Socrates was exectuted for, for Christs sake.
It's also been the mantra of the religious right ("conservative") for generations, on topics ranging from pornography to prohibition to abortion.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I can say decisively that careless use and storage of guns has killed and scarred far more kids than any form of pornography--yes, even goatse... "Conservatives" have been under the anti-pornography/anti nonmoral "think of the children" banner forever, which is to say--just as long as the "liberals". I don't mind guns or gay marriage. I'm for conserving our forests and oil, water and air. I don't think abortion is a good thing for the mind/body/soul, but I wouldn't deny it to those who need it. I didn't like Clinton, and I sure as hell don't like Dub'ya--they're both fucking liars. I guess it's just a bitch being a rational, moderate person.
If you're too stupid, arrogant or scared to pull your head out of the ground and realize that all of our parties use the same bullshit tactics, are completely full of crap, and only seek power then that's your problem.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:4, Informative)
Interestingly enough, the most recent VG Cats [vgcats.com] deals with this topic, as does a recent Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com]. It's nice to see a funny spin on this continuing GTA and "videogames kill!" bullshit.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Interesting)
Do-Gooder psych is more pathological than that, and it's not limited to Sen. Clinton. Nor is it limited to her party. But it usually starts off with something "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" and metastasizes from there.
Spend enough time behind the counter at the welfare office "helping the less fortunate", or enough time behind the security barricades of TSA "keeping the Homeland secure" and eventually...
Rand's a bit of a nut, and her epistemology may be from somewhere out past Zeta Reticuli, but I think she nailed the psychology of the compulsive do-gooder dead on. To hell with everybody, as long as you're feeling virtuous about it.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
Now there may well be a minority of people whom she does describe. But by and large, she's off the mark by a mile. The typical do-gooder isn't doing somethign because it makes him feel good- he's doing it because he thinks he's doing the right thing. He beleives it 100%. Its like religious zealots who try to convert everyone- they believe they are saving your soul. Assuming that they aren't what they claim to be wil cause you to entirely mispredict them.
Now there's the question of if Hillary is really that type of person. The answer is probably not- she's jumping on the bandwagon to get "What about the children?" votes for 2008.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Informative)
Have you actually read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged? "Fuck everyone else, I got mine" doesn't really come anywhere near her philosophy. It was more like, "Everyone being self-serving ultimately leads to the greatest good, because we only get what we want by producing for others." Unless you're self-sufficient, and that's basically no one now, you get what you want through trade. The surest way to get what you want and need is to aggressively pursue your self-interest. Since people spending time working hard are far more productive than people who spend their time niggling over what society "owes" them, the net sum of productivity is drastically higher and society as a whole benefits. Her protagonists are generous. Howard Roark uses his talents to build incredibly cheap, effective, quality low-income housing; Hank Reardon is generous with his relatives. But in the former case, Roark's work is perverted by meddlers crusading for "more, more", refusing to accept his work as it is, wrecking the project and taking things back to where they were: a project they can't afford, a project of lesser utility, and ultimately a failure. And Reardon's relatives hound him relentlessly, yammering about his social duties. He's creating a bold new railway system enabling massive increases in transportation efficiency and leading to the employ of thousands, but they ride him about his greed and his uncaring until he finally throws them out. But both of them start working for the greater good. Rand's lesson isn't that generosity or charity is bad; it's that when honest generosity and charity cross with greed and corruption, such virtues are likely to be perverted. Roark's housing project and Reardon's family are just two examples of people doing good who had their good deeds demolished by unproductive self-righteous busybodies.
Rand's characters and stories are meant to be larger than life and iconoclastic. They have heroic characters with heroic talents. But they illustrate the nature of man astutely quite often.
Now there may well be a minority of people whom she does describe. But by and large, she's off the mark by a mile. The typical do-gooder isn't doing somethign because it makes him feel good- he's doing it because he thinks he's doing the right thing. He beleives it 100%. Its like religious zealots who try to convert everyone- they believe they are saving your soul. Assuming that they aren't what they claim to be wil cause you to entirely mispredict them.
That depends on the type of do-gooding. For people who are following Hillary's "for the children" crusade against violence and sex in video games, it falls into a combination of:
(1) People too lazy to take care of their own children and think the government should protect them from everything
(2) People who are so horrified by sexual content of any kind that they will try to ban anything, anywhere, any time. They've been fighting for laws to keep alcohol out of stores, pasties on nipples at tittie bars, and making it illegal to show porn without getting a credit card first. In other words, they're people with a strong feeling of moral superiority; or a terrible fear of certain vices which manifests as moral superiority.
(3) Demoagogues like Hillary, or GWB & Karl Rove. They're there to capitalize on this mass of uncritical thought and feeling, to channel it into action. "Sexual content in video games! To arms!"; let's not stop and actually think about what we're crusading for or against. It's a bit like GWB and his "Wherever people stand for liberty, we stand with you
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
Did I do it anyway? Sure. Because it was the right thing to do, a friend needed my help. Did I enjoy doing it? No.
If you really think helpign people is emotional hedonism, you have some severe psychological issues.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
If we are going to deconstruct things, why not also deconstruct the psychology behind people who refuse ever to take anyone's virtue at face value?
I suspect that people who refuse to admit the possibility of virtue do so because they do not have (or do not care to have) any virtue of their own, and they need to find a way to justify their lack of virtue without feeling inferior or immoral. If they can "prove" the non-existence of virtue in anyone else, then they are no worse than anyone else, despite being selfish uncaring bastards.
Parent
Do nothingers are even more screwed up (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, in the end everything we do, we do for selfish reasons, but I like helping people. Not because I like them to bow or scrape, not because I feel better than them, but because I feel like I am building a world where people help each other, a world where, if the situation were reversed I would be helped. I also feel good about not having desperate miserable people around me.
The irony is that Ayn Rand's philosophy is, " To hell with everybody, as long as you're feeling virtuous about it. And I'll tell you how to feel virtuous about ANY damn thing you want to feel virtuous about, as long as it isn't helping someone else! Remember: Helping is Hurting, Charity is Theft, a Hand Up is a Slap in the Face, Sharing is Selfish, Only Egotism is True Loving Compassion."
Ayn Rand and people like her who consider any kind of charity or compassion as selfish egotism are the laziest type of self involved, egotistical, idiots. I will defend their right to spout their crazy nonsense, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or that I have to say it isn't B.S.
You don't want to help others? Fine. Don't, see if I care, but if you are going to mock me for caring and for acting out of compassion and assign to me the basest of motives, I am for sure going to point out how selfish, egotistical, and short sighted you are. There are plenty of good reasons for wanting to help others that don't revolve around being a self important prick.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
Hillary? Do-gooder? Gimme a break.
She's doing what all slimey politicans do -- she's jumping on an issue which will offend the fewest possible people (young people don't vote very much anyway) in order score points and look like a hard-fighting politician struggling for truth, justice, and the American way.
I mean, just look at this completely worthless Congress: they ignore the US military's widespread and continuing torture, they ignore Bush's wholesale and blatant lies to start the war in Iraq, they ignore Karl Rove's lying and outing of a CIA spook just to score points in a game of political revenge, and they whitewash everything from the 9/11 investigation to Halliburton robbing taxpayers blind.
Yet they find time to rant about baseball players on steroids, Janice Jackson's nipple during the Superbowl, and Hillary's whining about cyber-sex in GTA.
The founding fathers aren't just rolling in their graves -- they're vomiting with disgust and the coffins are getting full!
Parent
Did you know...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you aware that the United States is in violation of UN mandate?
Are you aware that the United States has recently supported (perhaps currently supporting) terrorists?
Did you know that to some degree, every nation on the face of the earth is a threat to every other nation's national security?
Isn't amaizing how pointless and misleading true statments can be?
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Interesting)
Now there is no "small government" party, it seems. They both want to meddle and they both want your money (OK, technically, today's GOP just wants to spend your money, they don't actually bother to collect it first, but that's a minor quibble). How did America become a choice between two nanny-state parties? Do we have to wait for all the Boomers to die before we can get back to small government?
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Interesting)
That's who the parties cater to now. Those who are afraid. That's what "Family Values" is all about - fear. Fear of the unkown, the expansion of things you don't like, fear of foreign influences on your life, fear of a million artificial ghosts who want to eat your kids. Look at the SUVs, the PTAs, the condo associations, etc. All fueld by terrified busybodies.
Of course, we're young and invincible, in a field that reaffirms our own mental godhood, so we don't feel that fear as much.
Parents are being trained to fear every second that their kids are away - of bad influences, of paedophiles, of another kid going nuts and killing them. Once fear takes hold, higher principles like freedom and democracy go out the window.
The unfortunate, silent fact is that Americans _want_ a nanny state. Not the '60s liberal nanny-state, where nanny feeds you and clothes you, but a nanny-state that just tells you what not to do, but doesn't actually care for you.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the Libertarian party wants to abolish police forces and public schools. That's a little further afield than most "socially and fiscally liberal" people.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.reformthelp.org/home/intro/ [reformthelp.org]
Check out this link. I have hope. With support, the opportunity to reform the LP into an effective party is a real possibility.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a lot of regulations in this country, but at least I know that when I drive to On the Border for lunch, I have a pretty good chance of those mandated seat belts and airbags saving my life in the event of an accident, not getting salmonella with my burrito, and not having the restaurant catch on fire because of aluminum wiring.
Most of the world's economy has been primarily libertarian since the dawn of man. It was the concept of human rights that catapulted us into the modern world we currently enjoy. And human rights should always trump capitalism.
Parent
Re:Do-gooder (Score:5, Insightful)
If you go back and read the papers from the 70's and 80's, you'll see that the majority of car manufacturers did not provide shoulder-harness seatbelts and airbags until legislation was passed mandating their inclusion, despite widespread public support of these devices.
The restaurant you're eating at has a damn good reason to ensure that their workers handle the food you're eating properly: if they don't, they lose profits. All it would take is one or two cases of food-borne illness before word would spread and that restaurant's business would dry up pretty quick.
1. If this is true, then why are the rates of food and water contamincation higher in countries like Mexico? Shouldn't the free-market method of quality control have weeded out all of the bad restaurants by now?
2. What if all of the restaurants and food sellers in your area subscribe to the cheaper-is-better business model?
3. Read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to understand what life was like in "free-market" America before the FDA
4. Please explain why the notoriously unsafe aluminum wiring was used in just about every structure built in the 70's until the building codes were changed to prohibit its use. What happens to the free-market system when everybody uses the inferior and unsafe solution despite the consumer's wish.
Remember that if you don't like some what some business is doing, you can exercise your ultimate right as a sovereign consumer and not patronize that business
I really don't like Wal Mart and would like to shop elsewhere for my camping equipment. Unfortunately, Wal Mart has wiped out the other two stores in my town that sold camping equipment. What do people do when the free-market system creates a monopoly or a cartel as usually happens in unregulated economies?
In the absence of government regulations, Consumer Reports-type publications will open up to test, survey and measure how well car safety devices work, how many people have caught food-borne illnesses from Bob's BBQ or Joe's Gyros, and whether or not the wiring in those restaurants is safe or not.
1. If I were a restaurant owner, I would simply not allow that Consumer Reports person to inspect my kitchen.
2. What's to stop me from just paying a nice fat "consultation" fee to this Consumer Rating Company so they give me a good rating? (If you've ever been through ISO 9000 certification, you'll be especially aware of this little trick).
3. Assuming I can find an uncorrupted for-profit Consumer Rating Company, it's going to cost me more than a non-profit governmental entity.
And I now I hear you asking, "what if people don't take the time to buy these consumer watchdog magazines
I have an idea. Since it would be a real pain in the ass to have to constantly check up on every little thing like house wiring, car safety, food quality, etc, let's pool our resources into some sort of not-for-profit entity that monitors all of these things for us in an unbiased and fair manner. Give this organization some teeth to enforce our collective wishes and we might have something. We could call it...hmmmmmm....government?
Parent
Re:Republicans sponsored the bill & you blame (Score:5, Funny)
Did you just ask, with a straight face, why Slashdot posters aren't even-handed with their dealings of members of both political parties, and both genders?
Well, I'll assume you're in earnest and answer.
1. Democrats are better than Republicans by the slimmest of margins. Actually, most of us really adore Democrats but since we know they're just as slimey and two-faced as Republicans, we pretend not to. But we vote for them anyway, despite all of our talk of voting for Libertarians, who more closely resemble Republicans than Democrats. When you boil it all down, we didn't get up on time on election day to make it to the polls.
2. Women are weird creatures who don't think we're funny and who can't appreciate the subtle humor necessary to doggedly recite tired lines from British pop-culture trash from the 1970's. Since they shun us at social gatherings (like family reunions and GenCon), we harbor unspoken misogynistic tendancies that manifest at odd times. For as much as we hate George W. Bush, at least nobody of his gender has ever rolled their eyes when we quoted Jabberwocky!
Parent
Very Nice Article (Score:5, Insightful)
I was wondering this same thing. Could this be a conceivable conclusion? Could it be possible that kids these days are actually getting their adrenaline fix from these games instead of causing real-life crimes (or vandalism)?
When I was a kid the games were much mellower, and less realistic, and I was a hoodlum. I could speculate that if I had these games I would have caused much less trouble when I was a kid.
Re:Very Nice Article (Score:5, Funny)
Foo you on Senator Clinton.
Parent
Re:Very Nice Article (Score:5, Insightful)
Could be. However, look at it this way: Video game consoles are cheap and abundant these days (when adjusted for inflation, they might be the cheapest they've ever been). If more and more kids are staying inside to play, instead of roaming the streets, wouldn't that lead to less juvenile crime?
I know that, when I behaved like a hoodlum (rarely), it was more due to boredom than any other factor.
Parent
Re:Very Nice Article (Score:5, Interesting)
Possible. Something else to consider, though: GTA doesn't just allow you to commit vandalism, it also deals you consequences for your actions. Run over pedestrians, police chase you. I'll tell you something, once you've gained three stars in that game, the Police turn into real bastards. They keep coming, they never give up, and your chances of survival have more to do with luck than skill. I can imagine kids saying "Well, that was fun, but man I never wanna piss off the cops."
It's hard to say, really. My basis for this suggestion is that in playing GTA I've become quite allergic to attacking 'innocents' in the game. It's a lot easier to play when you don't have cops trying to drive up your butt. Compare this to Crazy Taxi. I never made any effort to avoid pedestrians in that game because they'd instantly jump out of the way. If you ask me, that's far worse than GTA. You'd think that people would understand that "Don't do that." doesn't have near the effect that "Don't do that BECAUSE..." does. GTA's not bad at illustrating the consequences.
Parent
Re:Very Nice Article (Score:5, Funny)
Won't someone think of the Nazis?!
Parent
Re:Very Nice Article (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true. The study you're referring to was about World War II, and in response the military changed their training tactics in subtle ways to reinforce the kill instinct, i.e. changing rifle targets from bullseyes to human shapes, using bayonets on stuffed humanoid dummies, etc.
The upshot of this is that this new training worked too well, and was partly blamed for Vietnam-era war crimes like the My Lai Massacre.
The kill instinct in war has nothing to do with video games, and everything to do with military psychological conditioning.
Parent
On Killing (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the other part. Getting back from WW2 took a nice slow ship in the company of your comrades, where you had plenty of time to talk through a lot of what you had seen and done, and generally had an opportunity to "come down" from battlefield conditions.
Whereas in Vietnam, you could be in the bush on Sunday, and back home a civillian on Monday. No chance to adapt to the new surroundings, no suport network, and just to rub salt in the wound, a rather unsympathetic populace.
I don't think you can hang Mai Lai on traning tactics though. A better source of blame is an unprofessional (in the literal sense) and undertrained soldiery who got all the technical training but little of the ethics and ethos.
DG
Parent
Re:Very Nice Article (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been close to death before in real life, but honestly the adrenalin rush from playing video games is a much better high. They are designed to get your adrenalin pumping and they are much better at it than say skydiving. Skydiving may be really fun but it's not fun for vary long and you spend a lot of time and money waiting to have fun. It's the same reason why I don't really go to amusement parks they are fun but video games are much more fun.
Parent
Heh. Football... (Score:5, Funny)
football (Score:5, Funny)
well, duh
Re:football (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Let's make really important issues moral ones! (Score:5, Interesting)
heh, sure, those kids are really spending all that time doing homework and not nearly as much as becoming more aggressive playing after-school sports or killing, fucking, and carjacking!
Down with homework and more carjacking! Oh wait.
The most amazing thing about this is that Hillary can get so many people up-in-arms and pissed off about a stupid fucking video game and no one else can mobilize parents to "protect their children" from real harms that go virtually unnoticed in the political arena.
Someone really needs to link serious environmental issues to religion-based morality. Maybe then people will get mobilized. Afterall, it seems to be quite the rage recently...
Re:Let's make really important issues moral ones! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention that most of the people who will support such action from the government is the same parents who want the government to raise their kids. I guess the fact that "GTA:SA" comes with an "M" rating on it (well, now "AO") didn't deter mommy and daddy from buying the game. Then they're "shocked, SHOCKED!" (to quote "Casablanca") that there's sex and violence in video games. Too bad responsible parenting has gone out the window.
Parent
The f'd up logic of it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, there was a backlash for the violence in the game. And honestly, I don't think kids should be playing it. I am by no means conservative, but I think the game is just in bad taste for impressionable youth. But whatever. The game was given a rating, I don't think it should be outlawed.
What pisses me off is that all the recent uproar is because there was sex in there. You can beat a cop to death, but for Jebus' sake don't show animated boobs! Oh the humanity! Violence is OK, but sex, something natural and essential to our very existence of the human race, is taboo. Superbowl? OK. Boob at the Superbowl? Congressional hearings. Unjustified War? Hmm, OK. The F word is uttered in public? the decline of our moral civilization.
Parent
Re:The f'd up logic of it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when is 17 a kid? In a couple months, they can vote, marry, serve in the military, smoke, buy guns and fuck legally. Like they not doing the latter already.
Parent
Action (Score:5, Insightful)
Need to re-think the video game market (Score:4, Insightful)
Clinton's Real Agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahhh fun times!
And another thing (Score:5, Insightful)
What's this lame soft-core porn doing in my ultraviolent "Grand Theft Auto"?".
This reminds me of one of my first experience of US TV. I was watching "The Godfather" on TBS, in the middle of the day. When Santino beat the living Bejeesus out of his sister's husband on the street, they showed every frame of the violence. 5 minutes later, they pixelated the 3.5 seconds of nude breast (the only nudity in the entire film) in Michael's wedding night scene.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
true, sort of (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Taco failed to read into the author's sarcasm regarding football, but that's ok.
The author of the article seems to have taken some of their ideas from the recent Discover Magazine article titled Your Brain on Video Games [discover.com]. A very interesting read, a lot of which I agree with.
I'm a parent, a geek, and a former athelete (yes, it's possible). Our children (ages 8-15 now) have their homework time and we (they?) split their entertainment up between going outside to play, video games, nonsensical tv, and educational tv (of course, with a few random things thrown in to boot). On top of that, we ask that they play one sport of their choosing, and one instrument of their choosing. The mention of football in the description is a bit misleading. Some of the good things football teaches are
- How to work with other people
- How to get along with people you may not like
- Discipline and focus, with regard to achieving a goal
- Planning and stragety
- Competitiveness, which certainly can help later in life if applied correctly
Other things are learned by playing instruments such as math (in different bases), appreciation for different cultures, etc... but that's a bit off topic here.Video games can actually teach children as well. However, when they start to focus all of their freetime on video games, rather than other forms of entertainment, I think they're mission out on quite a bit. Everything in moderation.
Re:true, sort of (Score:4, Informative)
Steve Johnson wrote both of those, and the book Everything Bad is Good for You. He's been in the news quite a bit lately.
Parent
Politicians and the Hype (Score:5, Interesting)
The bigger problem is, I believe, that they don't hear anything but the hype. Most politicians don't troll Slashdot or gaming sites. They have enough to do with meetings, looking at bills, more meetings, campaigning, photo ops, and the rest.
I wrote a small piece on this not too long ago [advancedmn.com] that talked about this issue. It's not just that Senator Clinton is believing the hype - that's all she's probably hearing! Who in the gaming community is really going to her and the other politicians who discuss the issue?
Where's the Hollywood style lobbyists from the gaming industry? Isn't this what the ESRB and other gaming organizations should be doing - going to politicians and explaining how an R rating is the same as an M rating, how they're working with stores to keep M rated games out of the hands of minors (and if they aren't, then they damn well better be before Washington does it for them), why the "Hot Coffee" mod was never meant to be played and discovered by people voluntarily choosing to play the nude scene (and if they are minors, do you really think they can't get nude people easier than installing a mod in a $50 PC game?).
Yeah, I'm pissed at Ms. Clinton and Thomson and all of the ilk who "don't get it" - but I don't entirely blame them, because odds are there are few people who have really taken the time to explain it to all of them. (Well, except for Thomson - in my opinion, he's just a money grubbing lawyer now using nudity-in-games claims to line his pocket). [theapprenticepaladin.com]
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Yeah, but has he actually played GTA? (Score:5, Informative)
Worse if the game actually were as characterized, it wouldn't sell as many copies: way too difficult, not entertaining enough.
But the description sounds really good. "Training the wage slaves of the information age"
You have a niave view of Senators (Score:5, Interesting)
You have a niave view of Senators. They understand the silliness and meaningless of what they are saying, probably better than most people around here. What you fail to understand is that media events like this are all about getting face time on TV. Free face time on TV is more highly prized than nearly anything else. The explicit lyrics crusade of the 80s, the assault weapons crusade of the 90s, the current video game violence crusade, all were merely PR stunts that accomplished very little.
Football's real aggression (Score:5, Interesting)
Hitting after the whistle incurs a penalty. Hitting the wrong way incurs a penalty. Hitting the wrong guy let's someone gain yards or score. Going outside the boundaries hurts not only you, but your team.
Yes, football is a very aggressive game. But at the end of the game, you're going to go party, and often with members of the other team (unless they're your arch-rivals but even at the end of the season you'll be laughing with those guys over the last game).
All of which are valuable real life lessons. There's a place and a time in real life for aggressive action (not necessarily physical, but sometimes), but if it's not controlled, you'll quickly find yourself on the wrong end of the moral (and often legal) line.
Mostly what football teaches, though, is that you can push past whatever limitations you percieve given the dedication and time.
I'm not sure that GTA has similarly positive lessons to be learned from it. GTA has the advantage that the aggression is pretend, but has, from what I've seen, no corresponding lessons about control and responsibility to teach.
Re:Keep going further left, Hillary... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're Karl Rove, planning the 2008 election, you want to go after Hillary on her ethics and her family values. You want to neutralize her female base by making her appear to not care about family and good parenting. This is a calculated move by Hillary to move to the *right* on this issue, not the left. It doesn't matter who she blames, it matters that she's in the papers sticking up for some kind of "family value."
(I blogged about this here [nonperiodic.net].)
Parent
Re:Starts of fine, but then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this based on anything but a gut-level, kids-these-days, knee-jerk reaction? Just wondering.
m-
Parent