Adam_B Uncensored

Politics?! In this blog?! Believe it! Of course, you can choose to ignore it, but just remember that it’s important.

So here’s a little bit of trivia about me: When I was in college, my major was not a typical engineering major like Computer Science. Instead, it was, believe it or not, Political Science. Throughout my childhood and into high school, I had always found politics to be fairly intriguing. So the plan was to take Political Science and go on to law school, like so many lawyers before me. Obviously, that career track didn’t quite turn out the way it was originally intended, but I’m not complaining about that!

The upshot to me caring so much about this particular topic is that I end up getting excited around election season. Primary season is especially interesting if you want to see the best and worst of politicians in action. My opinion, if you’re interested, after the jump.

If you haven’t been ignoring the news lately, you’ll know that the Democratic primary has been turning into a slugfest. There are three serious contenders: Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, and Sen. John Edwards. (Boy, that’s a lot of Senators.) John Edwards, while having some great policy ideas, has not gained any real momentum this time around, and that leaves just Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fighting for the nomination.

And boy, it’s been ugly. Before the Iowa caucus, there was a decent amount of civility between the candidates. But since then, it’s become something of a firestorm. The issues have in some way taken the backstage to identity politics: Clinton’s gender and Obama’s race. Both of these are definitely significant; it means that for the first time in American history, there will be a serious candidate who is either a woman or black. And that’s a good thing! But that shouldn’t be the reason that one of them wins. They should be evaluated on their merits.

The mainstream media typically covers the large platform planks of candidates, and so chances are good you’ve heard about issues such as health care and the Iraq war. But there are other, narrower issues that I (and I assume people who got to this blog) might care about that aren’t really heavily discussed by the media. Issues such as technology, the Internet, and gaming. When the candidates are viewed through this prism, I believe that the best choice of the Democrats would be Barack Obama.

Obviously, my livelihood relies on the Internet, and Barack Obama has articulated the most coherent and agreeable policies I have heard. From his website:

• Obama supports net neutrality.
• He wants diversity in media ownership; believes the FCC has been far too lax in preventing media monopolies like Clear Channel.
• Barack Obama also recognizes that lurking out there are the darker corners of the media world: from Internet predators to hateful messages to graphic violence and sex. (Uh-oh…) Obama values our First Amendment freedoms and our right to artistic expression and does not view regulation as the answer to these concerns. Instead, an Obama administration will give parents the tools and information they need to control what their children see on television and the Internet in ways fully consistent with the First Amendment. (Phew…)

To that last point, I say “Fuck yeah!” Usually when someone brings out the “Think of the children!” rhetoric, that means that they want to limit speech in a way that will affect everyone. I believe he takes exactly the right approach to it: give parents the education and tools to protect their kids, instead of banning potential bad things from getting on the Internet in the first place. The First Amendment should never be taken lightly!

This mentality suggests to me that he is the most aligned with my viewpoints about any efforts by the government to impose censorship. If you contrast this to Hillary’s earlier crusade against videogames, you’ll see a stark difference. As it stands in other forms of media, the government does not impose laws forcing movie theaters to prohibit minors from going into R-rated movies; it does not impose laws forcing music stores to prohibit selling albums with explicit lyrics to minors. These are voluntary measures, and they generally work quite well.

However, in the case of videogames, she believes that the government needs to play a bigger role. From a Clinton Press Release:

“The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it’s making the difficult job of being a parent even harder,” said Senator Clinton. “I am announcing these measures today because I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control.”

Senator Clinton announced that the legislation she will introduce will put some teeth into video game ratings by instituting a financial penalty for retailers who fail to enforce the rules. It will prohibit the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors and put in place a $5000 penalty for those who violate the law.

This could very well be a slippery slope, and I understand that she wants to “protect the children,” but that should very clearly be the parents’ responsibility.

For these reasons, in addition to a myriad of others found in his platform, and the fact that, well, I find him likable, my endorsement (valuable as it is), goes to Barack Obama.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.