From the GamePolitics blog:

A Pennsylvania congressman who said that Grand Theft Auto was more likely to be a bad influence on ghetto children than their suburban counterparts feels he has been mistreated by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.

As reported by GamePolitics, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) was roasted by Stewart on the June 22nd episode of The Daily Show.

An article in today’s Chester Daily Local reports that Pitts contends his remarks at the June 14th hearing of the House Subcomittee[sic] on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection were mis-portrayed by Stewart.

During the subcommittee’s period of opening remarks on June 14th, Pitts said, "It’s safe to say that a wealthy kid from the suburbs can play ‘Grand Theft Auto’ without turning to a life of crime, but a poor kid who lives in a neighborhood where people really do shoot cops and steal cars and deal drugs might not be so fortunate. There’s almost certainly a child somewhere in the America who is going to be hurt by this game. Maybe his dad is in jail or his big brother is already down on the corner dealing drugs."

Needless to say, Pitts is pissed that he was labeled an "insane jackass," as his original comments would generally seem to imply. Perhaps Mr. Pitts should reconsider his original statements instead of attacking those who find them questionable? He supported a ten-fold increase in fines for "indecency" on television, yet I’ve heard nothing to suggest that the array of violent TV shows make people [black, poor, or otherwise] violent, or that seeing Janet Jackson’s nipple causes people [black, female, or singers] to expose themselves, or even the slightly more plausible view that smoking on TV causes young people to smoke.

I wonder how this works in his mind. What is it exactly about video games that causes Mr. Pitts’ "poor inner city children" to become violent after playing video games? Does he think they’re dumber, less able to discern fantasy from reality than rich white kids? Are they born criminals, waiting for a video game to show them how?

A better question might be: what causes someone to feel so hopeless, so desperate and so dispensable that crime seems like an option? What causes the constant economic deprivation, not of stuff directly (because the tease is essential), but of opportunities to work to earn that stuff? What causes kids to fear and hate the very authorities that are supposed to be protecting them? Do Video games do any of that?

Video games can let people act out fantasies, true enough. Games can teach new ways of problem solving. They could even be designed to teach people how to be better criminals, which is largely what prisons are functionally set up to do. But the choice, the impetus, the motivation to become a criminal, violent or otherwise, rests with the person, while the causes rest with the environment in which he or she lives. Unless people are robots, programmed by whatever they last saw or they’re so mentally ill as to not be able to tell reality from fantasy, video games can’t make them do anything. Who except Republicans would argue that someone would be so stupid as to blindly follow marching orders whispered from some manipulative amoral source? I mean, only an idiot would blindly, unthinkingly repeat any such talking points generated by the RNC, right?

If violent TV, movies, and video games realistically do anything to our brains, they may actually help de-sensitize us to violence. Where violent images might have once been shocking, they no longer are. But that has both positive and negative sides. Seeing Tom shoot Jerry in the face with a shotgun is apparently still good clean fun, especially when Jerry shakes it off and everything is reset for the next cartoon. But seeing the repercussions of violence in a more realistic way can help teach that there are real consequences to playing with Dad’s pistol. If you shoot her, your sister won’t just get up and brush it off.

On the flip-side, does being de-sensitized to violence makes us more likely to do it? Consider this: If someone commits violence for the thrill, then he wants to be highly sensitized to it. On the other hand, de-sensitization might theoretically help someone avoid recognizing or caring about the pain he is causing, because it causes the perpetrator no anguish of his own. But crime is an inherently selfish act — the only implications of violence that really matter to the perpetrator are those against the perpetrator, not so much the victim.

And if there is any fundamental difference between Movies  and TV vs. Video Games, it’s that the latter is inordinately more interactive. Video Games can be much better training tools,  which is why our own government uses games to help train and even recruit soldiers. True, then, that video games can help train us for violent situations (hence my usual summary: Video games don’t cause violence, they merely train us for it).

But that training cuts both ways. We can be trained to handle people who are violent. We can better defend ourselves. We can better recognize the signs of impending violence instead of being drawn into it. Perhaps if more wars were fought out realistically in simulations by both sides, we’d realize that most are no-win situations. To bend a line from "War Games," the only way to win in reality is not to fight. That’s what most violent video games teach in the end, and it’s a lesson some people could do well to learn.

This is the same fight they’ve been fighting since Rock and Roll and before. And what was taboo to one generation is classic to the next. Thinking video games cause violence is part of the same fundamental fallacy as thinking Sex Ed causes teen pregnancy: that new information and experiences are fundamentally bad.

And the truth is, bad information and hollow experiences can lead people astray, especially without guidance and support. But spitting up the apple won’t get you back into the garden of eden, folks, no matter how hard you try.