Grand Theft Auto IV...the road to Hades??

Katherine Kersten is essentially the token conservative for the Star Tribune. Sometimes, her columns are pretty good. She uses the plain folks fallacy a little too much like our buddy Nick Coleman, but she still serves a purpose, which is at least putting conservative thought into a paper that is decidedly liberal, and probably has a decidedly liberal readership.

But, this column is a little much for me. She is trying to make Grand Theft Auto IV to be a lot more than it is. Grand Theft Auto is a video game that is admittedly misogynistic. You can almost count down the ten commandments as they are broken, from what I understand (I have never played any Grand Theft Auto game). But, I believe Kersten is using the same train of thought that blames hip-hop lyrics for inner city violence and rock lyrics for kids committing suicide. To me, this is ridiculous on its face. For one, despite her protests, a lot of gamers are adults. They are people my age who cut their teeth playing Nintendo. For another, the video game reps she mocks are correct in that parents need to know what their kids are doing and playing. One of my brothers bought a Playstation 2 for his kids. There is no way that any Grand Theft Auto game will ever go through his doorway. He pays attention to what his kids are doing. This is good parenting, and frankly raising well-adjusted kids is a parent's number one job.

Here's the bottom line, though...Grand Theft Auto is a game!! There is little if any reflection in reality in this game. Does Kersten really think that a bunch of hormone-addled kids (and adults for that matter) are going to play this game and then go out into society and cap hookers? She says she doesn't think that, but I tend to think that people like her really want to have something to blame for people acting like idiots. TV, hip-hop and rock music, and video games make an easy scapegoat. However, in the incredibly unlikely event that someone tries to re-enact GTA IV, you would have to question whether that person has all of his/her marbles in the first place.