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I was dumbfounded over your pontificating on the subject considering your complicity in children being exposed to these games. From the tone of the article your son is under 17 and as a responsible adult you of course considered the Mature rating (not intended for children under 17) and chose to rent it for the boy anyway only to be horrified and indignant at its content. You failed to mention whether or not you picked the lad up a six pack of malt liquor only to be outraged that it made him drunk. I would have been too embarrassed to submit the article but like most columnists you have the ability to launch into a rant and be impervious to your own hypocrisy. When people state you're "all for" something or that they "believe in the 1st Amendment..." it's immediately followed by some limiter which to me is out of the side of your face talk. Like most knee jerker parents I think you WOULD rather something be banned or not be allowed to be manufactured at all than have to police your own kid and take responsibility for how they turn out. Worse yet is that you'd be tickled pink to deny other adults access to the games because Susie's little scamp is the most important person ever and should be so to everybody. Everyone wants to believe kids are so easily swayed to the point they follow through. Ask any head of a mob or crime syndicate what motivated him to aspire to that position. If any of them answer "a video game" I'll eat the hat of your choosing. In their child's play our grandfathers emulated the Duke killing hordes of Indians . To my knowledge not too many of them went on to pursue the real thing as teens or young adults. Another parental failing on your part is to assume video gaming is singly a child's pursuit and are shocked at the content. Many adults assume the same of animated shows and plop junior down in front of the Simpsons or, worse yet, the Family Guy and then are shocked when their kid quotes something randy from Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin. Please get off the pulpit, lay off the keyboard for a minute and do some parenting. Observe the things your runt is exposed to, gauge whether it's appropriate for him or if he can handle it, and act accordingly. A game is too violent-take it away. A movie too bawdy -block it. A bicycle too dangerous-don't get it for him. In short be responsible for him. I don't buy this "it takes a village" tripe. That you felt the overwhelming need to propagate your blue-ribbon DNA is on you alone. I choose not to have children and retain the right to surround myself with whatever debauchery, hedonism or licentiousness I want and shouldn't be denied because you look down your nose at it. This planet is not only for breeders.

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Susan, reading your article gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, as I realized that both conservatives and liberals can still come together to join in the practice of ill-informed righteous indignation. Your description of the new Grand Theft Auto IV reminded me of another violent, blood-filled video game of recent years. In it, the lead character is an innocent young man who is slowly corrupted by the influence of his criminal family until, eventually, he takes over the family and orders mass murders of all their criminal opponents. Oh, hang on, that wasn't a video game, that was The Godfather. But, as usual, it is left to the “adults” (meaning, generally, people old enough to be shocked and confounded by a new medium) in society to tell us exactly why the deviant violent or sexual content in the things that teenagers and twenty-somethings enjoy is so much more dangerous and damaging than the good old fashioned sex and violence of yester-year. The depravity of cinema isn't so serious, of course, as the depravity of video games, just as the depravity of literature is far less worrisome than the depravity of cinema, while the depravity of The Good Book is beyond reproach, especially compared to that seedy trash other people call literature. But, of course, when one reads Lolita or watches Apocalypse Now or plays Grand Theft Auto IV, one can easily see that in each case that sexual or violent content is part of a larger scheme of thematic and artistic goals. Perhaps it's difficult to see that at work in a video game if one is ignorant of the medium, because, like cinema and comic books, video games have a language, both verbal and visual, that must be learned to one degree or another before the final product is understood. But it can hardly be coincidence that video game players, reviewers, and creators have almost universally hailed Grand Theft Auto IV as a stunning achievement, earning a 99/100 composite review on metacritic.com based on 53 reviews. But, of course, you would rather compare video games, as an art-form, to pornography, rather than to cinema. Just as you would rather take the inaccurate position that Rockstar owes its success purely to teenagers, rather than recognize the vast numbers of adults who play their games. You'd rather blame a company, who made a video game intended for mature audiences, or an industry, whose self-regulatory body labeled the game “Mature” (the video game equivalent of an R), rather than blame parents who indulge their children by allowing them to play games intended for adults without understanding the game, the genre, or the medium enough to know what is or isn't appropriate for those children. I'm afraid I have news for you: Rockstar is not beholden to some idea of what is best “for the children” when they make games for adults. The average age of a video game player is 29. The average age of a video game purchaser is 36. Like comic books, video games have long suffered the foolish presumption that they, as a medium, are aimed at children. That is simply no longer the case. Like books, movies, and every other artform in the world, parents who don't want their children exposed to a specific work will simply have to prevent them from being exposed to it.

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Susan, I just read your column in the May 8, 2008 Florida Today reflecting on your views of McCain's health plan. You state how he wants to work with individual states to guarantee coverage for thier citizens. Hummm, sounds like he is staying true to his ideology. In your diatribe of how hard it was to get insurance for "the woman who has helped me raise my children" aka your nanny, you lament that she "settled" with the unthinkable, horrific, HMO! Do you not get the fact that an HMO is Hillary's health plan?! You obviously never had to worry about being insured as you are able to afford to buy insurance due to your income status, which you have earned through your hard work. You are lucky to have never had to wait in a long line in tremendous pain for a doctor to finally see you, THAT would be a goverment health plan to the "T", I would know first hand as I served in the military and have lived under a "goverment health plan". Yet you subscribe this type of system as being the panacea that this counrty needs! What a hypocrite! Save your wailing and nashing of teeth for your comrades, don't go out and egregiously misinform the public at large. I wish your nanny well, thank God she has you!