[NYTr] Hillary Clinton Joins Joe Lieberman to Resurrect the Culture Wars

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Huffington Post via Alternet - Dec 18, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/70798/

Hillary Clinton Joins Joe Lieberman to Resurrect the Culture Wars

By Jane Hamsher

I guess this must be one for those of us who spent the 90s wanting to
throw large objects through the television set as we watched that
sanctimonious, finger wagging, judgmental scold Joe Lieberman on the
floor of the Senate joining with the Republicans to derail the
constitution over Bill Clinton's zipper:

Senators Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Evan Bayh (D-IN),
and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) called for a thorough review of the
video game ratings process in the wake of "Manhunt 2" receiving a
"Mature" rating. In a letter to the Entertainment Software Ratings
Board (ESRB), the Senators detailed how the change in rating opened the
door to widespread release of the game, which depicts acts of horrific
violence.

Well that is just peachy. Do we suppose Hillary sat down and actually
played Manhunt 2 on the campaign trail in order to arrive at this
conclusion, or did she just take Joe's word for it, much like she did
when she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that others have quite
rightly pilloried her for? Because Joe, you'll recall, was a useful
idiot for the Bushies when they discovered Iran had no nuclear weapons
program and they had to find another reason to bomb them into the stone
age -- something they neglected to tell the public about. And despite
the fact that Clinton's excuse for voting for the AUMF was that she had
"bad information" from the Bush Administration on the Iraq weapons
program, she decided to trust them -- and Lieberman -- and amp up the
Iran war rhetoric.

One wonders at what point she will stop following Lieberman over the
cliff.

Wired magazine:

    I agree that the current ratings system and all its consequences
needs to be seriously re-evaluated, but not in the sense that Clinton
et al apparently do, which is that Manhunt 2 never should have been
released. 

The uncharitable amongst us might conclude that this is simply a
cynical ploy on Clinton's part to pander to old people, upon whom her
Iowa chances depend. I'm sure that's not the case. Which is why I'd
like to resurrect a suggestion from last year that Clinton find her
voice and condemn the violent religious intolerance expressed in the
Left Behind video game.

Jon Hutson describes the game:

    Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose
purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish
its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life.
You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage
the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission -
both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill
Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the
separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream
Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual
warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You
have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years
old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are
linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling
author of The Purpose Driven Life.

Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups denounced it at the time of its
release, but out of Clinton and Lieberman, who have made themselves the
scolding nags of video game morality, why -- not a peep.

Some might find this potentially much more dangerous than Manhunt II,
given the fact that people who act out on suggestions made by video
games are relatively few, but people are dying in the Middle East at an
alarming rate because politicians like Joe Lieberman have decided they
will manufacture reasons to wage war there if none exist, and amping up
religious bigotry among young people sets an excellent stage.

Since Mitt Romney has said that there will be no Muslim members of his
cabinet (though the New York Times hasn't quite tripped to that fact
yet), I think it's an excellent time to show that Senator Clinton's
views regarding religious tolerance are deeply felt and not just some
Sunday morning prayer group she attends to further her political
ambitions. If she's in the video game denouncement business, she needs
to denounce this one, too.

And if she's really a political leader capable of leading the country
she can demonstrate it by getting ol' bipartisan Joe to join her. May
make him a bit uncomfortable showing up at the next Christian-Zionist
convention and confronting all those tough questions from the Rapture
crowd, but hey, Joe has made a career out of telling the right lie at
the right time.

I'm sure he'll have no trouble.

[Jane Hamsher blogs regularly at firedoglake.com. ]

© 2007 Independent Media Institute.