Clinton's loss is a win for creative freedom
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Image via Flickr, (CC) licensed.Some news sources have called Senator Barack Obama the Democratic nominee this evening.
Before you boo and hiss, hold your breath and finally refuse to ever come back here unless I apologize for offending you, your candidate, or your finer sensibility that don't want to read about politics, I've got to sit you down for a second and tell you that as a fan of TV, film, or video games, this is a good thing.
While politicians demand that entertainment developers act responsibly while creating content for kids and young adults, there should be some push-back where these developers also demand a common sense leader in return.
No preaching here, just the simple facts. Senator Clinton leans pretty heavily to the right when it comes to entertainment violence. She favors legislation at the federal and state levels that forbids selling violent video games to kids, and while that in theory sounds pretty good, nobody -- including Clinton, Joe Lieberman, or the entire Republican party -- will agree to define what kind of violence is off limits, and just how much sex is too much.
Those things are necessary to avoid being an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and yes, many state courts all across the country have ruled that video games count as speech and must receive protection under the first amendment.
We all want to be responsible people but not everybody can agree on our definitions of how much is too much, so the last thing we need are vague laws that say "some of this is too much" but refuse to say how much. Nearly a dozen or more states have passed laws that Senator Clinton supported and they were all struck down -- at great cost to tax payers who pay the legal bills for all state actions -- as unconstitutional.
It may not be the most important issue, or even a very important one, but it still mattered. It matters to me, and it matters to you if you watch TV, go to the theater, or buy and play video games. As a candidate, she is on the wrong side of the fight to protect creative freedoms and her loss in this contest is, at least as far as this single issue goes, a pretty good thing. As for all the other issues, I think we could have done a hell of a lot worse.
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