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This morning in the Seattle on KOMO radio news they reported that there is a new video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City released that the sales are souring during the Christmas season this year. They said in the news report that they have already sold millions of copies of the game since it was released in October. I have not played the game myself but the radio news report said the game gives you points for picking up a women prostitute, more points if you have sex with the prostitute and then the most points if you murder her after you rape her. You also get points for killing the police. At the end of the radio news report, they played the sounds from the game, of the woman's voice screaming as she was being murdered so we could hear it.
I heard again on the radio Monday Night that here in the Seattle area the company making the game has purchased advertising space on the side panels of the Seattle City buses. Can you even imagine the ironey of that? Advertisements on the side of the city bus trying to entice children to play a game that encourages them to kill women and murder policemen. Is that like the fox guarding the hen house? I am sure Seattle is not the only city in America being flooded with advertising for this game. I also assume that many people are buying it for their kids totally unaware of what is in it.
It simply made me sick to my stomach to think this could be true. I don't think I have ever heard anything that upset me more in my life.... EVER. To just think about 6 to 10 million young men (I assume it will mostly be boys playing the game) will now sit every day, day after day having sex with prostitutes, then murdering them (just to get the money back) in this fantasy part of their mind and learning to enjoy it as a form of entertainment.
I assume some of those games were sold here in Seattle. How can I just sit and do nothing about that if it is true? How can I say, "Oh well, it is some one else's kids who are playing the game". I assume that some of those "some one else's kids" are living in my town, or a town where my daughters and grand daughters live, and are going to eventually start doing in reality what they are playing now as a game in their bedroom at home. How can I just sit and do nothing and wait for one of those boys to come and rape and murder my wife or one of my daughters or grand daughters? How can I just wait and hope their selling that game to kids in my town (or my nation for that matter... my kids live all over the USA) will not affect me?
Edmund Burk said so well:
The only necessity in the triumph of evil
Is that good men do nothing!
I don't know what I am going to do, but I am NOT going to just DO NOTHING. Someone, some where has to do something to stop this or we are all going to pay a terrible price in about 5 to 10 years when these young boys are matured in their minds to do what they have been fanaticizing. Maybe I should get the game myself and see if it really does what the radio news report said before I DO ANYTHING.
However I guess I keep wondering about what I read about the disaster at Columbine High School and the video game those boys played over and over before they did what they did. I keep asking myself if we learned anything from Columbine High School? One report I read in a national magazine several months ago ask some interesting questions. They asked: "Have none of us ever wondered why those two boys were wearing black trench coats just like the video game they had played a 1000 times. Hasn't any one wondered why they chose to walk down a long narrow hall to do what they did, just like in the video game they had been playing a 1000 times. Have none of us wondered why they chose to use long guns shooting people just like in the video game. Did we not recognize the similarity of them shooting people who popped out into the isle way just like in the game they had played a 1000 times. What they did at Columbine High School was an almost exact duplication of the animation of the game they had played 1000 times at home. Didn't we learn any thing from that?"
We will see.
Where is your wife or your daughters and grand daughters tonight? Home safe I hope. Or are they safe now, anywhere, even in your home? Just remember, THEY SOLD SOME OF THOSE GAMES IN YOUR TOWN THIS WEEK TOO!!!!!
Cordell