The drill is familiar: a lawmaker goes on a newsmaker show, puts on a Real Serious Face, is teed up some opportunity to tell everyone that scary scary video games bear some responsibility for America’s love affair with gun massacres.
Well, that wasn’t the drill yesterday on Fox News Sunday. Not for Rep. Nancy Pelosi. That’s partly because host Chris Wallace laid a smarm trap for the Democrats’ House leader, trying to shame her into telling her rich liberal friends in the entertainment industry to knock it off. Not only did Pelosi not cop out, she actually offered a defence of video games as being not the source of the problem.
“[T]he evidence says that, in Japan, for example, they have the most violent games and the lowest death — mortality — from guns,” she said. “I don’t know what the explanation is for that except they may have good gun laws.”
Now, some on the other side of this might point out Pelosi’s tendencies — she represents San Francisco, games development has a big presence in that area, I’m sure her contributors include those in the industry, and she has zero to lose by pissing off the NRA or Second Amendment supporters.
Japan may not like being characterised as home of the most violent games — that’s rather sweeping. But at least when someone — of considerable influence — was given the opportunity to make a politically safe scapegoating of games and those who enjoy them, she didn’t take the bait.
Nancy Pelosi: Video Games Are Not The Reason For Violence In America [Huffington Post]
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