VIDEO GAME DOPE

The Sun-Times covers another Blagojevich news conference in which he promoted his legislation that would ban the sale of violent and sexually explicit games to minors in Illinois.

"These kinds of games teach kids to do the very things that in real life, we put people in jail for,'' Blagojevich said during a news conference Monday at Glenview's Springman Middle School.

No, the game Blagojevich was not talking about wasn't "Hangman" -- he was talking about Midway's new release, "Narc."

Blago apparently finds the Rated M game particularly loathsome because characters can use confiscated dope to change the look and speed of "Narc'' to score more points.

"Just as we don't allow kids to buy pornography or alcohol or tobacco, we shouldn't allow them to buy these games.''

The governor did not confirm that his concern over video games stems from his own inability to distinguish between reality, e.g. alcohol and tobacco, and make believe, e.g. video game drug use.

But we must give the governor his due: In general, there are differences between juveniles and adults.

And those differences are so obvious that even the United States Supreme Court now recognizes them. Just how are juveniles and adults different? In the words of Justice Kennedy, "juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures."

But the question remains -- does this susceptibility to negative influences also mean, as Blago implies, that violent video games are training kids to be real-life criminals?

Not according to Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.

O'Hehir looked at academic work in the fields of psychology, criminology and media studies and determined that "while it's legitimate not to like violent media, or to believe it's psychologically deadening in various ways, the case that it directly leads to real-life violence has pretty much collapsed."

Game Over.

(S.T. link fixed)