Ten Years after Brown v. EMA
Ten Years After Brown v. EMA
It's that time where June 27th will mark another anniversary of the landmark 7-2 decision by the US Supreme Court in Brown(originally Schwarzenegger) v. EMA that struck down California law attempting to block people under 18 from buying 'violent' video games, and 2021 makes ten years since Justice Antonin Scalia, with Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joining him to make his opinion the majority opinion, made it the law of the land in the United States of America that:
-Video games are free speech and free expression under the First Amendment
-Video games can NOT be treated differently than any other form of entertainment like movies, TV, or music under the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law
-Fake "violent" content in all forms of entertainment is exempt from US obscenity laws, thus can NOT be treated the same as sexual content
-People under 18 have a First Amendment right to view free speech with or without parental permission as long as the material in question is not judged to be obscene
In previous posts on or around the anniversary of Brown v. EMA, I posted about:
- how the video game industry have always left it up to the gaming community in debating fake 'violent' video games against both the news media & the so-called parent advocacy groups like the Parents Television Council and Common Sense Media, leaving us gamers high & dry in the process (Two part post in 2013, Two years)
- how the gaming community started fighting amongst ourselves and with the gaming press during Gamergate(which is still being dragged out to this day whenever there's any criticism of certain people of certain characteristics) (2015, Four years)
- how the ship sailed on legislation against fake "violent" video games because of the SCOTUS decision, how the rest of the entertainment industry had the video game industry's back, how fake "violent" content in entertainment had not been the major issue it once was, how politicians had bigger issues to worry about, & how it is virtually impossible to overturn a SCOTUS decision or even amend the US Constitution(which is basically the only way to completely overturn a SCOTUS decision) (Two part post in 2016, Five years)
- how the mainstream corporate legacy tabloid trash news media shifted its focus away from fake "violent" video games and towards the internet and especially YouTube because they've become the bigger threat to the media conglomerates' bottom line (2017, Six years)
- how another wave of high profile mass shootings[specifically at a country music festival in Las Vegas(which had the most casualties ever for a mass shooting), at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas(which, by the way, was stopped by a good guy with a gun), and the school shootings in Parkland, Florida and Santa Fe, Texas) would not lead to another round of attempts to regulate 'violent' entertainment either by regulating sales or by taxing the sales despite all the hot air from President Donald Trump and other dumbass politicians; how Steam should not have pulled a game from its store that had a school shooting as its setting; and how regulating lootboxes in games was just another feeble attempt at regulation by trying to redefine gambling that seems like it ultimately went nowhere (2018, Seven years)
So, what to talk about this time that wouldn't be a complete re-hash of previous rants....
I don't think we're going to see many new attempts at regulating sales as Short Fat Otaku might have indicated in his video "A New Era of Moral Panic" if at all, and that's in large part because, as I've stated previously, SCOTUS basically gave the video game industry a neverending invincibility star by specifically saying that violent content cannot be considered to be obscene(and basically making obscenity laws a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment in the process) and that video games are considered equal to movies and any other form of entertainment under the 14th Amendment(especially when the research California used couldn't even prove that playing GTA was worse than watching Bugs Bunny cartoons and new research since 2011 STILL HAS NOT).
If politicians like Trump, Beijing Biden, Breadline Bernie Sanders, and others were really serious about challenging Scalia's very decisive opinion in Brown v. EMA, they would have done it after Parkland(especially if the whiny little bitches from March for their Deaths like David Hoggwash or bald bully lover Emma Gonzalez got on board, which they did not as far as I know; the only person related to Parkland that cried over 'violent' video games that I know of was Andrew Pollack, who lost his son and leans to the right wing). Or after Santa Fe, Texas since Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick did enough crying crocodile tears over 'violent' video games among other things in the news media and still did nothing about it when it came time to put up or shut up. Or after Christchurch over the shooter saying "Subscribe to Pewdiepie" while livestreaming the shooting on Facebook(which he copycatted from the murderer of Allison Parker and Adam Ward). Or after the shooting at a Wal-Mart in El Paso and the shooting in Dayton, Ohio by an Antifa jackass on the same day.
Nothing has really changed in that regard. As I said before, Sandy Hook was the first and biggest test of Brown v. EMA and while Connecticut and New Jersey did have bills filed with their state legislatures, they all got stuck in committee because of the SCOTUS decision. It seems like that Sandy Hook ended up as the only test of Brown v. EMA.
And let's be honest, for all the politicians' bluster over fake 'violent' video games, the fact that Trump and any other politician that whined(especially Republicans) did absolutely nothing shows what Tim Pool talks about when he says that Republicans are basically all bark, no bite and would rather be speedbumps to Democrats. I mean, I don't believe I'm the only one that has noticed that when it came to this one particular issue, the Republicans would talk the talk but would let the Democrats, whether they were neolibs like Hiltery Clinton or so-called centrists like Joe Lieberman, do the dirty work in filing the legislation that would inevitably get thrown out as unconstitutional, even if it was a RINO and a hypocrite like Arnold Schwarzenegger that fought all the way to the US Supreme Court and lost so badly that no one has even tried since.
Just about every law that was passed in the ten years before the US Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. EMA, even if those laws had bipartisan support, was filed by a Democrat and signed into law by a Democrat governor, making Schwarzenjogger basically the exception to the rule. Hell, then-Utah governor Jon Huntsman vetoed a similar bill in 2009 that Jack Thompson claimed to have written for the bill's sponsor(who since stated after the SCOTUS decision that he would not try to legislate against video games again),
One thing that has changed in the last ten years is the makeup of the US Supreme Court. Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have since died(Scalia in February 2016 and Ginsburg in September 2020) and Anthony Kennedy retired in July 2018. And President Donald Trump got to replace all three with conservative leaning judges Neil Gorsuch(replacing Scalia after Mitch McConnell bet on Trump winning and the GOP at least keeping control of the US Senate in the 2016 elections and hit the jackpot), Brett Kavanaugh(replacing Kennedy after surviving the biggest pile of bullshit anyone has ever heard of in the process), and Amy Coney Barrett(replacing Ginsburg right before the predetermined 2020 Presidential election that screwed Trump out of a second term like Vince McMahon screwed Bret Hitman Hart in Montreal at Survivor Series on November 9th, 1997), which arguably pushed the US Supreme Court further to the right in the process.
While it might be possible for SCOTUS to reexamine and even overturn Brown should a state be stupid enough to challenge that decision with a bill, I don't think that SCOTUS would overturn Brown even if Kagan did admit in an interview years ago to waffling since that decision. Barrett and Kavanaugh are said to have the tendency to allow previous SCOTUS decisions(existing precedent) to stand, so it seems more likely that they would vote to affirm Scalia's majority opinion in Brown(and Barrett used to be a law clerk under Scalia while Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy).
And while the Democommies, holding control of both houses of Congress by slim margins(especially the Senate, which is basically a 50/50 split with fake Vice President* Kamala Harris, who had become the California attorney general after the oral arguments in Brown v. EMA and before SCOTUS released its decision in Brown v. EMA, breaking any tie votes) are trying to kamikaze in legislation to add more justices to the Supreme Court(as well as everything else in their far left agenda because the Democrats and the left wing had a collective psychotic break after Trump won in 2016 that has NOT gone away since screwing Trump over this past November) and failing at it as long as Senator Joe Manchin holds the line(and the Republicans only have themselves to blame for that; unless Manchin somehow decides to leave the Democrats and join the GOP or even become independent and just caucus with Republicans, the opposite of what so-called independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King does), how does anyone know how those extra justices would vote on any given issue?
Another thing that seems to have changed is the virtual disappearance of the new wave of culture critics that sprung up in recent years. Anita Sarkessian and Zoe Quinn have for the most part vanished from the public eye after becoming the new Jack Thompsons or at the very least the new Parents Television Councils from like 2013 to about after Trump won.
Though it might not be the video game industry's embrace of the cult of wokeness that Sarkessian and Quinn are a part of and were at one point leaders of that creates the second crash of the industry, but the Covid-19 pandemic that basically caused the world's economy to approach hyperinflation(nobody's able to buy the new consoles, let alone the new games, because of shortages because nobody wants to work when the government is giving away taxpayer money for people to stay at home).
But Short Fat Otaku has somewhat given the way out of the woke cult's clutches in that same "A New Era of Moral Panic" video as well as another video he made called "Play is Subversive". We need to quit giving the game media outlets that are still around like IGN, Kotaku, etc. that continue to whine about gaming and the gamers the time of day since they're part of the mainstream legacy corporate media and as Tim Pool has been constantly calling for, and that's to start creating a new counterculture.
Funnily enough, the tenth anniversary of Brown v. EMA coincides with the 25th anniversaries of the two biggest things that led to the Attitude Era and the biggest boom period in pro wrestling history(the birth of Austin 3:16 at WWF King of the Ring 1996 and two weeks later, Hulk Hogan's heel turn where he joined Scott Hall and Kevin Nash in forming the nWo at WCW Bash at the Beach 1996).....but that's for another separate rant....
The bottom line is to stay vigilant and do not let the industry's biggest victory become for naught.
It's that time where June 27th will mark another anniversary of the landmark 7-2 decision by the US Supreme Court in Brown(originally Schwarzenegger) v. EMA that struck down California law attempting to block people under 18 from buying 'violent' video games, and 2021 makes ten years since Justice Antonin Scalia, with Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joining him to make his opinion the majority opinion, made it the law of the land in the United States of America that:
-Video games are free speech and free expression under the First Amendment
-Video games can NOT be treated differently than any other form of entertainment like movies, TV, or music under the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law
-Fake "violent" content in all forms of entertainment is exempt from US obscenity laws, thus can NOT be treated the same as sexual content
-People under 18 have a First Amendment right to view free speech with or without parental permission as long as the material in question is not judged to be obscene
In previous posts on or around the anniversary of Brown v. EMA, I posted about:
- how the video game industry have always left it up to the gaming community in debating fake 'violent' video games against both the news media & the so-called parent advocacy groups like the Parents Television Council and Common Sense Media, leaving us gamers high & dry in the process (Two part post in 2013, Two years)
- how the gaming community started fighting amongst ourselves and with the gaming press during Gamergate(which is still being dragged out to this day whenever there's any criticism of certain people of certain characteristics) (2015, Four years)
- how the ship sailed on legislation against fake "violent" video games because of the SCOTUS decision, how the rest of the entertainment industry had the video game industry's back, how fake "violent" content in entertainment had not been the major issue it once was, how politicians had bigger issues to worry about, & how it is virtually impossible to overturn a SCOTUS decision or even amend the US Constitution(which is basically the only way to completely overturn a SCOTUS decision) (Two part post in 2016, Five years)
- how the mainstream corporate legacy tabloid trash news media shifted its focus away from fake "violent" video games and towards the internet and especially YouTube because they've become the bigger threat to the media conglomerates' bottom line (2017, Six years)
- how another wave of high profile mass shootings[specifically at a country music festival in Las Vegas(which had the most casualties ever for a mass shooting), at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas(which, by the way, was stopped by a good guy with a gun), and the school shootings in Parkland, Florida and Santa Fe, Texas) would not lead to another round of attempts to regulate 'violent' entertainment either by regulating sales or by taxing the sales despite all the hot air from President Donald Trump and other dumbass politicians; how Steam should not have pulled a game from its store that had a school shooting as its setting; and how regulating lootboxes in games was just another feeble attempt at regulation by trying to redefine gambling that seems like it ultimately went nowhere (2018, Seven years)
So, what to talk about this time that wouldn't be a complete re-hash of previous rants....
I don't think we're going to see many new attempts at regulating sales as Short Fat Otaku might have indicated in his video "A New Era of Moral Panic" if at all, and that's in large part because, as I've stated previously, SCOTUS basically gave the video game industry a neverending invincibility star by specifically saying that violent content cannot be considered to be obscene(and basically making obscenity laws a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment in the process) and that video games are considered equal to movies and any other form of entertainment under the 14th Amendment(especially when the research California used couldn't even prove that playing GTA was worse than watching Bugs Bunny cartoons and new research since 2011 STILL HAS NOT).
If politicians like Trump, Beijing Biden, Breadline Bernie Sanders, and others were really serious about challenging Scalia's very decisive opinion in Brown v. EMA, they would have done it after Parkland(especially if the whiny little bitches from March for their Deaths like David Hoggwash or bald bully lover Emma Gonzalez got on board, which they did not as far as I know; the only person related to Parkland that cried over 'violent' video games that I know of was Andrew Pollack, who lost his son and leans to the right wing). Or after Santa Fe, Texas since Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick did enough crying crocodile tears over 'violent' video games among other things in the news media and still did nothing about it when it came time to put up or shut up. Or after Christchurch over the shooter saying "Subscribe to Pewdiepie" while livestreaming the shooting on Facebook(which he copycatted from the murderer of Allison Parker and Adam Ward). Or after the shooting at a Wal-Mart in El Paso and the shooting in Dayton, Ohio by an Antifa jackass on the same day.
Nothing has really changed in that regard. As I said before, Sandy Hook was the first and biggest test of Brown v. EMA and while Connecticut and New Jersey did have bills filed with their state legislatures, they all got stuck in committee because of the SCOTUS decision. It seems like that Sandy Hook ended up as the only test of Brown v. EMA.
And let's be honest, for all the politicians' bluster over fake 'violent' video games, the fact that Trump and any other politician that whined(especially Republicans) did absolutely nothing shows what Tim Pool talks about when he says that Republicans are basically all bark, no bite and would rather be speedbumps to Democrats. I mean, I don't believe I'm the only one that has noticed that when it came to this one particular issue, the Republicans would talk the talk but would let the Democrats, whether they were neolibs like Hiltery Clinton or so-called centrists like Joe Lieberman, do the dirty work in filing the legislation that would inevitably get thrown out as unconstitutional, even if it was a RINO and a hypocrite like Arnold Schwarzenegger that fought all the way to the US Supreme Court and lost so badly that no one has even tried since.
Just about every law that was passed in the ten years before the US Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. EMA, even if those laws had bipartisan support, was filed by a Democrat and signed into law by a Democrat governor, making Schwarzenjogger basically the exception to the rule. Hell, then-Utah governor Jon Huntsman vetoed a similar bill in 2009 that Jack Thompson claimed to have written for the bill's sponsor(who since stated after the SCOTUS decision that he would not try to legislate against video games again),
One thing that has changed in the last ten years is the makeup of the US Supreme Court. Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have since died(Scalia in February 2016 and Ginsburg in September 2020) and Anthony Kennedy retired in July 2018. And President Donald Trump got to replace all three with conservative leaning judges Neil Gorsuch(replacing Scalia after Mitch McConnell bet on Trump winning and the GOP at least keeping control of the US Senate in the 2016 elections and hit the jackpot), Brett Kavanaugh(replacing Kennedy after surviving the biggest pile of bullshit anyone has ever heard of in the process), and Amy Coney Barrett(replacing Ginsburg right before the predetermined 2020 Presidential election that screwed Trump out of a second term like Vince McMahon screwed Bret Hitman Hart in Montreal at Survivor Series on November 9th, 1997), which arguably pushed the US Supreme Court further to the right in the process.
While it might be possible for SCOTUS to reexamine and even overturn Brown should a state be stupid enough to challenge that decision with a bill, I don't think that SCOTUS would overturn Brown even if Kagan did admit in an interview years ago to waffling since that decision. Barrett and Kavanaugh are said to have the tendency to allow previous SCOTUS decisions(existing precedent) to stand, so it seems more likely that they would vote to affirm Scalia's majority opinion in Brown(and Barrett used to be a law clerk under Scalia while Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy).
And while the Democommies, holding control of both houses of Congress by slim margins(especially the Senate, which is basically a 50/50 split with fake Vice President* Kamala Harris, who had become the California attorney general after the oral arguments in Brown v. EMA and before SCOTUS released its decision in Brown v. EMA, breaking any tie votes) are trying to kamikaze in legislation to add more justices to the Supreme Court(as well as everything else in their far left agenda because the Democrats and the left wing had a collective psychotic break after Trump won in 2016 that has NOT gone away since screwing Trump over this past November) and failing at it as long as Senator Joe Manchin holds the line(and the Republicans only have themselves to blame for that; unless Manchin somehow decides to leave the Democrats and join the GOP or even become independent and just caucus with Republicans, the opposite of what so-called independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King does), how does anyone know how those extra justices would vote on any given issue?
Another thing that seems to have changed is the virtual disappearance of the new wave of culture critics that sprung up in recent years. Anita Sarkessian and Zoe Quinn have for the most part vanished from the public eye after becoming the new Jack Thompsons or at the very least the new Parents Television Councils from like 2013 to about after Trump won.
Though it might not be the video game industry's embrace of the cult of wokeness that Sarkessian and Quinn are a part of and were at one point leaders of that creates the second crash of the industry, but the Covid-19 pandemic that basically caused the world's economy to approach hyperinflation(nobody's able to buy the new consoles, let alone the new games, because of shortages because nobody wants to work when the government is giving away taxpayer money for people to stay at home).
But Short Fat Otaku has somewhat given the way out of the woke cult's clutches in that same "A New Era of Moral Panic" video as well as another video he made called "Play is Subversive". We need to quit giving the game media outlets that are still around like IGN, Kotaku, etc. that continue to whine about gaming and the gamers the time of day since they're part of the mainstream legacy corporate media and as Tim Pool has been constantly calling for, and that's to start creating a new counterculture.
Funnily enough, the tenth anniversary of Brown v. EMA coincides with the 25th anniversaries of the two biggest things that led to the Attitude Era and the biggest boom period in pro wrestling history(the birth of Austin 3:16 at WWF King of the Ring 1996 and two weeks later, Hulk Hogan's heel turn where he joined Scott Hall and Kevin Nash in forming the nWo at WCW Bash at the Beach 1996).....but that's for another separate rant....
The bottom line is to stay vigilant and do not let the industry's biggest victory become for naught.