Cheryl Olson needs to go on more of these shows. She does a excellent job providing a reasonable voice to the debate. I'd love to see a well moderated discussion between her and Jacko on the subject.

You know, I barely even paid attention to his rant on video games. I was much more focused on the fact that he blames Television, Magazines, and everything else in out society for making our society bad.

Yes, let's all go back to being farmers and playing with hoops and sticks. Because nobody was ever violent or depraved before those evil, evil MASHEENS were invented.

I thought Glenn Beck was a blustering moron before it was cool. Seriously, between Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Nancy Grace (I assume all of these were brought on to CNN to try and win back viewers from FOX News), it just makes you want to punch yourself in the face in despair at what we are calling news these days.

people give Fox News a lot of shit, which it deserves most of the time, but i think the larger problem isn't Fox specifically, but 24-hour news networks in general, evidenced by this latest stunt by CNN. think about it; they run "news" for 24 hours every day and most of the time, there isn't really that much true news anyway. therefore, they have to sensationalize, repeat and beat to death every scrap of loosely defined news that they catch wind of to compete with each other. and what do they do the rest of the time? they air opinion shows and one-sided interviews with panels of "experts" to fill the gaps. that's why i don't watch CNN, Fox, MSNBC or any of the 24-hour networks. it's the same shit repeated ad nauseum, spun to the point of ridiculousness and it's a complete waste of my time.

What a Douche. Name calling? I don't think I'm watching CNN anymore, already quit watching Fox News...

My roommate and I were watching this last night and when he asked her "well isn't the game teaching kids to find prostitutes?" And she answered "well most kids say they never knew about them, you don't need them to 'win' the game" was awesome.

Pnwed indeed.

I thought she did a fine job, especially considering the title of her book. I am sure Beck brought her on because of that and was mistaken.

@Pagster

Sorry, but as an educator, I gotta agree with BlackSunEmpire on this one. I've seen to many kids with bad tendencies, with parents who don't know how to raise their kid. I've got parents who believe their child can do no wrong (thus no punishment), another whos dad treats his mom like crap (he shows me a little respect for being male, but he constantly fights the female teachers), another whos mom blames us for his not doing home work (she wants us to bribe him with our money), and the list gos on and on.

Parents have the greatest impact on a child's development. Besides, every kid I talk to has already played GTA in some form (beyond GTAIII).

Who the fuck is this idiot.

Jesus H Christ, this guy is an absolute moron and his behaviour throughout the interview towards the woman who is being interviewed is terrible.

Wow, I guess America really is a land of opportunity if a total waste of skin like this can get a slot on the telebox for a major network.

The very first thing he says is "nudity"... I've played the whole game through and have yet to see a nipple.

Glenn Beck was totally pwned by Dr. Olson. That game blogger comment was totally uncalled for. I think Glenn Beck is some new breed of troll that choses the TV as his medium of trolling.

i have feelings, and the guy on the tv hurt them :[

Glenn Beck makes me sooo mad sometimes. I can't believe somebody this ignorant has his own tv show, seriously. Anyone that feels they should cram their religious and personal beliefs down our throats shouldn't have any airtime...it's disgusting.

@rabidkeebler & Blacksunempire

Fair points. I'm not sure my origianl post had much of a point beyond ranting about what i would'nt want a child of mine to be exposed to, but as you guys have said its fully the parents responsibilty to make sure that they're not.

"parents can't work the controls"

seriously, haven't video games been around long enough that pretty much every parent had played them at some point in their life? i mean, i understand not knowing how to use the 8 buttons to do everything, but these people act like if they pick it up, they will just run into walls and in circles. i think it's just this stigma of admitting that, yes, i played video games, but now i'm an adult so i'm too mature to even consider having the basic hand coordination to control a game. retards.

Eh, he just came off as a guy who read some things and was annoyed by them. Thus, he didn't care much for anything that had to be said. Matter of fact, I think it was pretty disrespectful of him to Cheryl to begin looking off camera and laughing at what she was saying.

But aside from that, I agree that yes society is the problem - not games. In terms of what Jack and people like him are trying to prove, the entire picture is wrong including the frame, not a few strands of the canvas.

As for parents not being able to work the controls. I personally feel that the controls are pretty self explanatory. Anyone who has worked a remote control for a TV is familiar with a D-Pad of sorts. Anyone who has worked the menu on a TV is familiar with a select and back button. For parents to apply things like parental controls on a console, it should be something fairly easy to grasp - especially since most of the time it's easily noted at the bottom of the screen.

However, I can't just blame parents for not understanding. I know that few parents of our age played videogames, especially for long. Face it, we're in an age where the parents of teens now, only had interfaced with the early games, and even then - it was a rather "geeky" and "uncool" thing to do. There were more important things to do like styling your hair with mousse and listening to 80's synth music.

The age that was more acceptable to games and more interfaced with them only has children that are about the age of 6 usually at most. You might want to count the extreme number of teenage pregnancies in that as well, whoms children are something around 3-4.

I personally think that news shows would be better off giving an unbiased commentary. If he doesn't like games, then fine. He can give his opinions. But why toss in "loser" or something of that matter. When I was discussing Beck earlier, I could have said "This douchebag" but yet I did not.

If he was unbiased and gave a decent amount of actual looking into what he's going to talk about rather than "winging it", gamers wouldn't be upset. I am not too upset with him myself. If he truly wanted to get anything done, he'd show people ON THE AIR, how to set the parental settings on the console. It's not hard. For some reason parents don't care about their children enough to be bothered with this sort of thing. But at least that's the right thing to do rather than say a bunch of "what if".

Glenn Beck does not play video games, and has been an alcholic, drug addict, and divorced husband.

I DO play video games, and have had none of these problems.

And yet this dipshit gets paid >10 million to continue living his life the way he does.

It's not the video games that are fucking kids up, it's society as a whole and daytime television programming on CNN.

Yea he's a tool. This is the reason I don't watch news on TV all that much. The only time I turn on a channel like CNN is to get an update on primary results or if some big catastrophe in the world is going on. Other than those 2 things I could care less.

Grand Theft Childhood, best book ever written?

"The adult rating would keep the game out of family friendly stores like Wal-Mart."

Is this the same "family friendly" Wal-Mart that sells movies like Evil Dead, Get Rich or Die Tryin, Saw, Hostel and the Rambo trilogy?

During a chat with some of my friends @ Allgames via IRC, were discussing this not too long ago. (most were pissed, some didn't care*) Really not surprised to see Beck go this low, or even lower. Its stuff like this, that makes me not want to watch any news anymore. Even to hear someone dish out unneeded rants.

"The News is a Lie!"

The Bible is WELL more violent than GTA. They crucified some dude in the Bible. How sick is that?

some simple math leads me to calculate...if this game was that dangerous and sold that many copies, wouldn't we have an army of 70 million cretins, hellions and an uptonogoodoers on the streets???

Wow when Dr. Cheryl Olsen came out I was getting ready for the typical bullshit "professionals" these shows bring out, and man was I wrong. It's so refreshing to see someone like her with a sensible attitude towards video games, not trying to sensationalize anything.

he is obviously a very retarded man with no other skills aside from spewing bullshit from his mouth so he can retain his job as a public propaganda broadcaster at CNN.