Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman has frequently spoken out against pop culture that he finds offensive and believes is harmful to young audiences. Lieberman once called for sweeping censorship of the Internet, and he supported Tipper Gore’s mid-1980s crusade to label music. In 2005 Lieberman publically criticized the Xbox game Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse. Lieberman called it “cannibalistic,” with the capacity to “harm the entirety of American youth.” He may have been a little off base!
With all of the violent video games on the market (i.e. Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, Halo), Lieberman decided to go after a game that was fairly tame. Stubbs the Zombie wasn’t a gorefest–it was a comic misadventure set in the 1950s, featuring a bumbling zombie who isn’t very good at hunting for brains. Furthermore, the children that Lieberman claimed would be corrupted by the game couldn’t even buy it. The game had a rating of “M” meaning gamers under the age of 17 couldn’t buy or rent it. Before Lieberman decried it, Stubbs was just another video game. Thanks to Lieberman’s rant, it became “controversial” which probably helped sales.
These same kinds of “censorship freaks”–Jesus freaks included–have attempted to ban Harry Potter novels, Halloween celebrations and Dungeons & Dragons games too. The American Civil Liberties Union has a noble history of fighting censorship for the benefit of all people. Most of the data in this article came from the Bathroom Reader’s Institute. THE END
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