Playing Politics: The 2008 Presidential Candidates on Videogames
10/31/2008 5:29 PM | 3 Comments | Page 3 of 4
On April 17, 1999, politicians started demanding some serious answers. McCain, along with senators Joe Lieberman, Ed Markey and Dan Burton, sent a
letter to President Clinton urging him to do something: "This is a problem which we, like you and the First Lady, have been concerned about for some time. Scores of studies, hearings, and protests of angry and fearful parents have convinced us that
the multimedia onslaught our children are exposed to every day is doing real harm, desensitizing kids to the consequences of violence, teaching them that gunplay is a reasonable way to settle disputes, and increasing the likelihood that life will tragically imitate art."
This letter set off a year of Washington scrutiny on violent media and gun laws. As that letter went to the White House, the senate issued a resolution calling for the Attorney General to commission a study on violent media. (The Surgeon General of the United States had last issued a comprehensive report on violence and the media in 1971.)
Maverick or maniac?
McCain held a
press conference on media violence on April 28, 1999, asking the president to convene an "emergency summit of the major entertainment conglomerates, and the interactive media industry." He also talked of the need to help parents: "They need help because our homes and our families -- our children's minds, are being flooded by a tide of violence. This dehumanizing violence pervades our society: our movies depict graphic violence;
our children are taught to kill and maim by interactive video games; the Internet, which holds such tremendous potential in so many ways, is tragically used by some to communicate unimaginable hatred, images and descriptions of violence, and "how-to" manuals on everything from bomb construction to drugs."
On May 2, 1999, McCain and Lieberman
introduced the "Media Violence Labeling Act," which would amend the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act to apply warning label requirements to violent media products. The McCain-Lieberman bill, which did not include TV programs, gave the entertainment media industries six months to establish a universal labeling system for videogames, video programs, motion pictures and music. (This bill obviously never went anywhere, because each industry has its own self-imposed ratings systems.)
On May 10, McCain encouraged other senators to come together to create a National Youth Violence Commission. In that
statement he said that "dehumanizing violence" was pervading society, and that videogames were teaching our children "to kill and maim." The legislation for that commission was
approved on May 20.
On May 12 he issued a
statement on the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB):
"... [the ESRB] should reclassify gore-filled games, which are almost all rated "mature," for players 17 and up, to the more restrictive "adults only," so that the likes of Doom don't fall into the wrong hands."
McCain succeeded in convincing then-President Bill Clinton to create a study, and the Senate to form a commission, on youth violence. He finally
called on Hollywood to "voluntarily limit" media violence.
"Media industry leaders ... should come together and voluntarily commit to reining in the toxic mix of sex and violence that has come to dominate so many of the products they produce and negatively affect our children today," said McCain.
