Grand Theft Adults Only

Children and teens will have to wait until they turn 18 before they can get their dose of virtual, video game sex, but the killing of people and fantasy creatures rages on. This past summer, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas video game had its rating changed from “Mature” to “Adults Only.” The new rating implicates that no one under the age of 18 is allowed to purchase the game. Select retailers have already removed the popular game and its new rating from their shelves.

This comes in the aftermath of an Internet modification that enables players to enter an otherwise hidden sex scene and minigame. The principal character then engages in sexual positions with all his clothes while the woman is naked.

Amid the outcry over a sex scene, obtainable only through the process of Internet downloading, Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman voiced their outrage with Rockstar’s video game. Despite the graphic violence of the game, which allows players to engage in brutal deaths, it took a secret hack-job of sexual pornography for Capitol Hill to denounce the game.

Are censors trying to make an example out of GTA: San Andreas? While this game and other violent games flood the retail markets, in his New York Times Op-Ed (7/22), Thomas Friedman describes the distribution of Islamgames at the Iqra Learning Center in Leeds, England. In the game “Ummah Defense I”, the world has “finally united under the Banner of Islam in 2114, until a revolt by disbelievers. The player’s goal is to seek out and destroy violence against others.” This game further divides the ideological differences between Islam and the Western world, and it may be Capitol Hill’s next biggest concern.

With sexually explicit porn sites a mouse click away and virtual violence role-playing at our hands on Xbox, PS2, and other game consoles, what are we trying to safeguard our children against? From the explicit and verbal violence in movies to music, it usually takes an act of juvenile violence before someone notices. The Columbine shootings brought accusations against music artist Marilyn Manson and video games such as Doom. If we want to stop future damage, perhaps politicians need to sit and play Grand Theft Auto or a similar game for themselves.

Now that the “Adults Only” rating is used, no longer will the images of sex drift into children’s and teens’ minds while playing a particular video game. Children are creative; they will find it elsewhere. Let us hope all the uncensored gun shooting in video games does not make a child a better marksman or trigger some mental imbalance causing a rampage shooting accident.

Censors and Senators Clinton and Lieberman are sending gray messages in a world of black, white, and red violence. It is unrealistic to believe that we can safeguard the youth culture from entertainment violence, but we fail at making the minor improvements where we can. It was not until a modified sex clip was attacked that the scarlet “AO” was embroidered on boxes of GTA: San Andreas. The killing of police officers, women, and thugs had previously warranted the playability by “mature” users.

A double standard lurks in the country, giving life to violence and death to sex. In a country that favors war as the end-all solution to conflict, it is no surprise that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came under heat for its hidden sex content rather than its violent game play. As for its gun-slinging, civilian-killing protagonist, he is no longer allowed to have intercourse. Sex is dirty. Killing is tolerated.

This Article Published in "The Hurricane"

The War in Iraq: A Sad Look Back

I have spent my summers in Cape May Point, New Jersey for the last 19 years. For the past three summers, two little hands periodically knocked on my door. It was the neighbor’s boys, two brothers, one seven and one five. They came to my father and me looking for help with fixing their bikes. This year I took the boys to the beach where we tossed nets into the ocean hoping to catch some crabs. Their eyes lit up with every crab we trapped.

Their father, Michael Kelly, was the Washington Post Writer’s Group syndicated columnist and past editor for The Atlantic Monthly. He also wrote Martyrs’ Day: Chronicle of a Small War and Things Worth Fighting For. The last summer I saw Mike, I helped him shovel sand into his backyard so his boys had a safe play area. Like mine, this was the Kelly family’s summer home.

When this war in Iraq began, he was one of the first journalists to go; he had covered Desert Storm. At the beginning of the war in Iraq, when the news networks reported a humvee accident that killed a journalist, the conflict in Iraq hit me hard and everyone else connected through Mike.

I cannot leave my home without seeing those two little bikes parked next to the yellow house on the dunes. Walking out of my house is a constant reminder of the effect the war in Iraq has had on the Kellys and many other families affected by this war.

As the war progresses and the death toll rises, the more we at home are joined by these unfortunate losses. There is no telling the length of our stay in Iraq or its outcome, but as in any war, the damages are irreparable. Tremendous suffering occurs on all sides.

The impact of death is far worse than death itself. To shield the public, the media rarely reports on life after suicide bombings, insurgent surprise attacks, or stealth precision bombing. As life speeds ahead, creating news by the minute, we bury the stories that came before. All it takes is a picture, a newspaper clipping, the recitation of a dead soldier’s name, or two little boys with bike problems, and all those events of yesterday become reality again.

Life is filled with tragedies. No person should ever have to go through a senseless tragedy, but for those who do, life is forever altered in a way that they and their loved ones will only know.

We struggle through the rise of gas prices, the president’s decisions, our occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, political scandals, and life. With the impermanence of life comes the permanenence of death, and the emptiness that death leaves may grow smaller but it never completely closes.

Twenty-five years from now, when we have seen what became of the war in Iraq, the combat will be another piece of US history; a time of suffering in this country cemented in the history books. For some mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, and friends, it will be a time when a loved one went away and never came back. In any conflict, foreign or domestic, we sacrifice something for the cause. As generations of people across the globe have seen, a war is fought not only on the battlefield but on our front doorsteps.

Mike Kelly will be remembered by his fellow journalists, his family, and his friends. Through his examples, Mike taught me to always try to live one’s life with concern for the truth, as well as standing up for the little guy when the big guy grows too powerful. For all those who have died and suffered in this Iraq war, it does not make it easier when the reasons for going to war now appear tainted.

This Article Published in "The Hurricane"