David Cameron, leader of the British Conservative Party and Gordon Brown's biggest challenger for the position of Prime Minister today detailed worrying plans for a rather sinister sounding "social covenant," a society where we combat crime and violence by essentially pretending it doesn't exist and by blaming it on things like films, music videos and, of course, videogames. Because it's never a criminal that commits a crime, is it? A disc of some kind is always the one that picked up the claw hammer and beat a child to death with it ... right? Is that how it works?
"Today's document sets out our view on popular culture - that the companies which make music videos, films and computer games have a social responsibility not to promote casual violence, the gang culture and the degradation of women," Cameron erroneously stated today. "We are never going to deal with crime unless we look at the broader context and say, 'Yes, tough laws, strong action on the police, but also action to strengthen our society. And that includes, I think, video games and things like that where we do need to think of the context in which people are growing up."
Hit the jump for my in-depth and, of course, indignant view on this latest political garbage.
[Via OrangeGoblin's Dtoid community blog]
I kind of liked David Cameron, but today's borderline insane collection of puritanical, pious statements have plunged him right into the mire of reactionary insects who truly make this society as despicable as it is. What astounds me is he doesn't realize the TRUE cause of social decline -- people like him who make apologies for criminals by robbing them of accountability and shifting the blame onto benign things like music and videogames. If you make criminals believe it's not their fault, that they are victims of a sinful and evil society, of COURSE they're going to continue a life of crime. They no longer feel responsible for their actions, they feel almost justified.
David Cameron, if you're reading this, and I know you are because we're Destructoid, a site with far more respectability and influence than you, I am going to say this loud and clear, because I am sick to bloody death of people like you who don't seem to understand the very society you're hoping to govern. Ready?
CRIME. IS. CAUSED. BY. CRIMINALS. AND. NOTHING. ELSE. END. OF. GOD. DAMN. STORY! Furthermore, Cameron's lies that music, films and games have some sort of 'social responsibility' would be amusing if they weren't so revoltingly disgraceful. I've said it before and, wearily, I'll say it again. entertainment has only ONE responsibility -- to be entertaining. However the means, however the method, a videogame's sole job is to make the consumer happy. Let the priests and the social workers and the teachers and hey ... the PARENTS provide the morals, that's THEIR social responsibility, the role in society that they willingly took on. It's not the job of music, films and games to educate our children or to mollycoddle grown men and women so we can pretend the world is all roses and buttercups and nobody ever feels pain.
Frankly, Mr. Cameron's ideas of a covenant, a social utopia, are scary to me. That he truly believes in whitewashing the nation's view of the world, that he genuinely feels the best way to tackle crime is to just close our eyes and ears, is frankly shocking. Taking away the violent games and the risque' music videos are not going to somehow turn immoral people into a bunch of born again Christians. It's ... inconceivable to me that educated, adult humans still have such blinkered views of the world and feel that the removal of videogames will instantly deliver us from evil. For once, I am glad that the Conservatives still have an intense stigma about their name and not a shred of credibility, because I am definitely not hoping to see this madman in power now. Not with his plans to create some kind of Neo-China in the United Kingdom.
Just try it, Mr. Cameron, you will be sorely disappointed in the results. I assure you.
Oh, and David then accused of the Labour party of having "knee-jerk reactions" to crime. Does he understand the concept of irony, do you think?
Utterly pathetic.
Contest:
10:38 AM on 08.28.2007
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It's like having the internet without Destructoid
It's like having a driver's license, but no
Let him be that way.
he's probably Jack Thompsons' butt buddy
crappy dell keyboard..
Of course, we never had people kill others before violent games came onto the scene. We didn't have any Albert Fishes, we didn't have any Ted Bundys, no John Wayne Gacys. Hell - we TOTALLY didn't have any petty criminals who stole or raped. We didn't have any people beating their wives. We didn't have anyone lynching people based on their race.
If we're going to blame ANYTHING at all other than the criminals, let's pick a good one - like illegal drugs. Then again, those are a cash cow for any government, whereas video game revenues gain them nothing. Why cut their own throats to "stop crime" when they can fuck with someone else's wallet?
Idiots.
The desensitizing of a person through media can affect his morales and judgement, especially at a young age. Granted it should be up to the parents or guardians, that doesn't mean that will happen, because most people are morons. (and this has been written to death)
That being said, this guy is the fucking king of moron.
"Hey buddy! Yeah, you over there!"
-Slaps slappable cheecks until numb-
"Sorry see, I just played Bitch-slap 3000!"
-Zoidberg-like exit-
I agree with everything said here. Flawless.
I just love the word Chilluns.
I think we can both agree I am a man of principal and pronounced morality. I used to watch Terminator and Puppet Master at the age of five. I grew up on violent films and videogames. You know ... I didn't even have good parents to teach me right from wrong.
But I could never bring myself to harm another person. Tell me, what makes me so different, that years of playing Resident Evil hasn't corrupted me?
As I mentioned in my original post, the BBFC system is severely broken because no one takes a blind bit of notice of it. We gamers need to encourage the education of parents and show that that yes, some games are for children, but certainly not all of them.
The [url="http://www.esrb.org/about/psa.jsp"]ESRB[/url] have a good set of campaigns, including the excellent Penny Arcade one, but I've never seen anything like that over here in the UK. The fact that the BBFC is a really a film classification board doesn't help.
Why can't politicians lobby for an independent game-only regulatory body, with a large education budget? Oh right - because that would actually be useful, rather than getting headlines like "PLAYSTATION FORCES CHILDREN TO MURDER!"
I remember back when I killed 5 people and their children over a rousing game of Dover Patrol. In all fairness, only one of those mofos deserved to die, but I couldn't help myself.
I got away with it, too, by getting a fresh paint job for my car.
Oh, wait. None of that happened. Friggen overactive imagination...!
This is the next step in an "evolution" that we have taken. Or you may call it "understanding" or "higher intelligence".. The knowledge that we no longer have to fight and kill for food.
But then again. It's rather rough to teach these things to schoolchildren when the parents allow them to run amok, dress them as sluts and gangsters, and scold everything but their child for the issues that arise... Even common morals and polite behavior is no longer a required class - matter of factly, it has disappeared as even an option in the elementary schools around where I live... How can children grow to be any sense of "Normal" if, for many of them, they are never taught the correct path to begin with.
And btw, you can make statistics prove anything.
This gets old after awhile, but we have to keep fighting against assholes like this guy seems to be. Seems to me like a socialist government the way he talks. Whatever happened to free speech? How about parent's begin deciding what kind of games their children should play. Oh yeah, parent's don't care anymore(not directing this at any of you d-toids) about what their kids do. This will never end.
But I mean, it's such an obvious scapegoat. Who wants to deal with criminals anyway? Crime's been around since forever, and they know they can't do anything about it but make empty promises. By painting videogames as evil, they can do all the time-wasting things every politician dreams of doing, which is have statements and meetings that mean absolutely nothing, yet they still get paid a very large sum of money for it.
There is an article on the brain, how it's always one millisecond away from madness, how it's like a big machine and it just takes one broken valve to make the whole thing explode, and that has alot to do with it.
Sometimes the world has a different affect on people, and sometimes if effects people more than most, and violent media such as games, movies, etc, aren't helping.
But that doesn't mean we should change our society, culture, and the way we live life because others can't mentally adjust.
I can't wait to see the charmless, supercilious fucker crash and burn. And it'll be at the hands of Gordon Brown, possibly the most dour human being alive today.
It would be nice to have it over the internet, and then we can see their universe of reason fall down like Rapture under a giant Big daddy. Because after all in science there is something called "facts", and they arent any facts supporting the role of videogames making children more violent.
David Cameron is perhaps the biggest idiot the world of Politics has ever produced, at least Bush and Blair actually believed what they said, whether what they said was right or wrong is another debate, but at least they beleived it.
This Cameron gimp would say anything to get attention, if he thought that talking about the gang raping of new born seal pups would get him some knee jerk positive reaction from the masses, then he would say it. Fucking moron.
"Mr Cameron said his previously-published plans to incentivise couples to stick together through the tax system would also assist the law and order agenda."
I think this Cameron guy is onto something. After England's youth have all forms of entertainment taken from them, they'll be able to learn life's lessons from bitter parents who are only sticking together for tax breaks.
Although I felt it was getting close to becoming a rant towards the end, you are right about people putting responsibility in the wrong place.