When I was a kid, we didn't have those cruel, violent, disgusting, sickening video games. We had cruel, violent, disgusting, sickening comic books like Tales From The Crypt and even cooler yet, Crime Doesn't Pay, where criminals did the most vile acts, and finally got caught and prosecuted in the last panel with the ominous pronouncement, "Crime Does Not Pay." Nobody bought the comic books for the last panels.

When I've sung for kids, one of the most requested songs is, "That song where the woman splits open someone's head with an axe": The Farmer's Curst Wife. Adults who wouldn't be caught dead playing a gruesome video game slow down to ten miles an hour at a fatal accident, hoping to see the body.

I find violent movies like Pulp Fiction disgusting too, and usually successfully avoid them. Pulp Fiction taught me to read reviews more carefully before I went to see something. I was truly sickened by the movie, and while I recognized that it was brilliantly executed, I wish it had never been made.

When I was a kid, we killed Japs and Krauts without blinking an eye. Never mind that we used pressed sawdust army 45's and had to stop our wars to go home when our Mother's called for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Kool-Aid for lunch.

If video games were the cause of violence, it would be easy to stamp it out. Just "prohibit" them. Like they did alcohol during prohibition.:-) It always seems like we're trying to find a way to legislate morality. One thing hasn't changed over all these years. Morality starts at home. People get all up in arms at the word "Morality" because people like the "Moral" Majority have usurped it. It is just a system of values, and isn't dependent upon a belief in God, or any "System." My kids didn't play those video games, although we loved beating the crap out of Space Invaders. They didn't go to violent movies, but they didn't just go to the latest Disney flick, either. They were raised to live "in the world," but not "of the world." My oldest son is married and he and his wife are raising their kids the same way. If kids don't learn basic moral values (And I don't believe that religion is a requirement) at home, They'll be taught by the folks on the street or in the school yard.

Jerry