Oh Hillary, what a futile attempt at family values...

Hillary Clinton recently led the charge to remove a video game with racy content from store shelves. I am not suggesting that the video game, Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas, shouldn't be removed, or at least have its rating changed, but seriously, the game is centered around gang violence and even romantacizes cars ramming into police cars. Is there any way that the game should have been put on the shelves without an Adult Only rating anyway?

Anyone buying this game knew the history of Grand Theft Auto and knew it was only a matter of time before sexual explicit scenes were in the game, whether they were part of the game in general or hidden within the game to be "unlocked". What's sad is that the ESRB, the party responsible for rating video games, should have known it too.

But I digress. Mrs. Clinton is quoted in the USA Today as saying, "So many parents already feel like they are fighting a battle against violence and sexually explicit material with their hands tied behind their backs."

Is that really true? Does Mrs. Clinton really speak for "many parents"? If that is true, then "many parents" must have let their kids take over their household. Do parents not have the ability to refuse to buy violent and sexually explicit material? Or is the more appropriate question, do parents lack the desire to be responsible for shaping the identity of their children?

Let's just get to the meat of the problem. The fact is that parents aren't monitoring their children's activities enough. I can guarantee that when I was in my youth, which wasn't too long ago, there is no way that I would have been allowed to play a game such as Grand Theft Auto. Are we really that much busier than our parents were? My parents certainly worked their fingers to the bone, yet still had time for ball games, school activities, monitoring extra curricular activities, and still had time to discuss their concerns that involved sex, drugs, or alcohol.

But I recognize society is changing. We likely aren't busier than our parents; it's just a different kind of busy. We are too busy filtering scads of spam email, figuring out what different codes mean that our kids are using in chat rooms, and worrying about layoffs that have run rampant in America today.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to impress me, try taking on spam email to free up hours wasted per week. That way parents can free up time to spend with their families and monitor what video games their kids are playing. It's ridiculous how much irrelavent emails we get. If they can come up with a federal no-call registry, how about simply creating a federal no-email registry. Ok, Ok, so many spam emails originate from outside the United States, but isn't that something that a Senator should be figuring out how to fix, rather than being involved in Party Politics?

Of course, again, the issue always comes down to...a Senator, or any public official, will only accomplish what we demand that they accomplish. It's time that we recognize that we have the power. We need to take the time to let our elected officals know what we expect of them. Many have emails to contact them. If that's the case, perhaps we should all just forward our spam to them. Eventually them will have to take action when they are innundated with spam.