'The State’s evidence is not compelling', mo'f@#ker

Sorry, but video games depicting gratuitous violence CAN be sold to minors. In the mood to bitch-slap somebody or blow away a row of cops in Mortal Kombat or Grand Theft Auto? No problemo. Make little Johnny's day. So sayeth the U.S. Supreme Court. In Monday's 7-2 decision, the court overturned a California law that would restrict the sale of violent video games to minors. This was the Golden State's seventh try. "The State’s evidence is not compelling," wrote Anthony Scalia for the majority. Violent video games are free speech. Cue Law & Order's "chung CHUNG!" Case closed.

The trouble is, I agree with Scalia, the high court's equivalent to Darth Vader. The savage violence wrecked by video game icon Duke Nukem is no more graphic than that produced by the Brothers Grimm. "Certainly the books we give children to read — or read to them when they are younger — contain no shortage of gore," Scalia writes in the opinion. "Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed. As her just deserts for trying to poison Snow White, the wicked queen is made to dance in red hot slippers 'till she fell dead on the floor, a sad example of envy and jealousy.' ... Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves. And Hansel and Gretel (children!) kill their captor by baking her in an oven.”

Do you love the classics that we encourage high school students to read? Scalia reminds us that "Homer’s Odysseus blinds Polyphemus the Cyclops by grinding out his eye with a heated stake. ... [and] In the Inferno, Dante and Virgil watch corrupt politicians struggle to stay submerged beneath a lake of boiling pitch, lest they beskewered by devils above the surface." (Kinda how we observe Congress today.) Come to think of it, even our nursery rhymes are infused with apocalyptic imagery. How about Mother Goose's paean to England's Great Plague, the one we all sang as kids: "Ring around the rosie / Pockets full of posies / Ashes! Ashes! / We all fall down!" Sweet, huh? Top that Killzone 3!

Yes, society should be mightily concerned about the violence kids are exposed to. But it's not the job of the state to regulate what entertainment fare they ingest. It's yours as parents and responsible adults.