GTA: God, Titties, and Asses

There's a wonderful episode of South Park where the kids are playing ninjas and Kenny throws a shrunken into Butter's eye. Not wanting their parents to find out what they did, they dress Butters up as a dog so they can drop him of at an animal hospital. Butters wanders off in a haze, and near the end of the episode, Cartman uses his "ninja power of invisibility" and walks naked across a public stage in an attempt to get Butters.

Butters is near death, and the town is outraged...that their children saw another boy's naked penis.

The story reminds me of the current controversy with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In the game, you play a gang banger who can run over people, beat them up with almost every conceivable weapon, shoot cops, and...well, that’s all I know so far. I’m only on mission 4.

Recently, someone wrote a program that allowed players to unlock a special sex mission in the game. A few media watchdog groups and politicians, including Sen. Clinton, successfully pressured to have the game’s rating changed from Mature to Adult. Target, Best Buy, WalMart, and other retailers are taking it off the shelves.

GTA: San Andreas is an awesome game. But I wouldn’t want my kid to play it. It’s incredibly violent, crude, and could make younger teens less sensitive to the idea of inflicting pain upon others. Isn’t that worse than dirty, filthy sex? Sometimes this country seems absolutely loony.