Clinton and Lieberman Ally With ESRB

Along with Penny Arcade, the ESRB can now apparently count Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman as allies. GamePolitics reports that they'll be participating in an ad blitz for the organization, aimed at promoting awareness of the videogame rating system. From the article: "This is a major coup for the video game industry. Senators Clinton and Lieberman are co-sponsors of the Family Entertainment Protection Act, video game legislation currently before the Senate. Sen. Lieberman applied the political pressure in the mid-90's that essentially led to the development of the industry's rating system. Sen. Clinton led the political charge against 2005's Hot Coffee scandal. The question that remains unanswered is - what motivated these two watchdogs to partner with the video game industry on this initiative? Did the industry perhaps make concessions or give assurances?" 1up has further commentary on this announcement, including an insightful G.I. Joe reference.

Re:Sidle up to the right

[Overzeetop]

Nobody will stand for it. The Republican party has learned that, aside from stroking the Christian Right, the most effective way to garner support is to give people what they really want - the ability to be lazy. You see, taking a responsible stand on almost any topic generally requires effort. The effort could be reasoned thought, additional cost, or emotional fortitude. It's easy to dislike people who aren't like you, dump sewage and harmful chemicals into waterways to save a few percent in the monthly bills, and believe that eveyone should have the exact same moral center as you do. Standing up in a crowd and telling people that they should be more tolerant, consider the long term view, and empathise with those less fortunate is just not going to get you votes like telling people "you're right, fuck everybody else."

This is not to say that a large portion of the Left doesn't say, "psssst, you know those rich folks should really be paying for your stuff, cause there's the ones causing all the problems." That doesn't exactly scream "against the crowd."

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that I may need to write in Stewart/Colbert in 2008 just so I can sleep at night. At least when stupid things come out of their mouths, they're meant to be stupid.