The older I get, the more confused I apparently become about priorities. In between the fast forwarded pornographic videos that populate part of my workday world I have recently been appalled to see what seems like an ever-increasing number of high ranking public servants saying and doing an equal or greater number of unsettling things.In addition to the pesky constitutional questions that devil president George Bush’s domestic spying program, the unlikely usefulness of a constantly expanding no-fly list that includes the name of potentially dangerous newborns; the insecurity provided by air marshals who smuggle narcotics through airport security; the implications of Homeland Security officers who order library patrons off of Internet terminals being used to view adult materials; and the utter waste of nearly four million hard earned tax dollars in order to drum perfectly duty-worthy gay soldiers out of the military, the headlines are filled with examples of immorality, violence, callous indifference to the suffering of others, and high profile examples of how “personal responsibility” continues to be the ultimate four letter word of politics.

Somewhere between watching “Daddy Spank” and “Bi Black Sex Party 3” I learned how United States Vice-President Dick Cheney, apparently caught up in the excitement of an out-of-control quail hunting party that mixed guns and alcohol, managed to shoot a fellow hunter in the face. So much for any NRA sponsored gun safety training one might presume he received during his decades of public support for the Second Amendment. Remember kids, guns don’t kill people. A disregard for the results of one’s actions on others kills people. Adding to the high weirdness of this story are reports of a temporary media and police black out, President Bush’s praise of his second-in-command’s behavior, and a prompt and public apology for any inconvenience that the veep might have experienced on his account — from the man whose face Cheney had peppered with buckshot.

Who cares about Brad and Angelina — What’s behind Quailgate? Some kind of twisted Dom/sub relationship involving extreme gun play? Not to be outdone, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld closed out the week by assuring U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the Guatanamo Bay prison should remain open for business because it’s filled with “terrorists, bad people, people who, if they were back on the field would try to kill Americans.” Odds are that if the 500 men, most of whom haven’t been accused of a crime, let alone spent any time in the company of a judge during their four years of confinement, didn’t hate our guts before, they probably do now – and it’s kinda hard to blame them. Gitmo may not compete with the torture chambers of Torquemada for pure misery, but it’s hardly the Hotel Cipriani and certainly no place you’d willingly go just to spend a few years away from the wife and kids.

Talk of high moral values is all the rage these days, especially among the allegedly long victimized religious right. Oddly enough, this same demographic is simultaneously well represented in regional, national, and international headlines that speak of corruption, the endorsement of reckless and vengeance-driven violence, manipulation of the marketplace, and an unnerving willingness to sacrifice the human rights of others while disregarding the rule of law except when it can be used to restrict the behavior of others.

Were I a more jaded pundit, perhaps it wouldn’t rattle me quite so much to realize that these are not the issues that bring the populace together in common cause for protest and reform. Perhaps the concepts and solutions are so complex that they leave the average person feeling overwhelmed and in search of a battle they can comprehend and feel emotionally comforted by. Whatever the motivation, one of the topics that has Americans as diverse as sex workers and “traditional family value” activists singing the same tune is opposition to the availability of popular “Mature” rated computer games that have attracted the attention of teens and contain violence and sex, sometimes in hidden “Easter eggs” that aren’t officially part of the final release but which can be uncovered by savvy gamers.

Supposedly small-government loving social conservatives find the games morally offensive and point at the often sexually suggestive hidden segments as justification for mandatory labeling laws that would require the government to create designations and then enforce them via legislation, complete with harsh penalties for those whose products might be considered obscene or come into contact with minors.

Regardless of their personal views on civil liberties and individual rights, the assumption being employed by those in both the right and left wings in this particular matter is that unsavory behavior viewed and/or participated in during game play is likely to be emulated by the young in real life. The logic appears to be that raping and killing prostitutes in between high speed car chases – as is the case in the much attacked Grand Theft Auto game – is more appealing to the average American adolescent or teen than is sitting on his or her ass for hours on end in front of a screen while pushing buttons on a game console while eating junk food and drinking soda.

I’m no statistician, but I’m guessing that a lot more kids do the latter than do the former.

On the other hand, it’s reasonable to wonder what playtime activities people who grow up to pursue acts of violence indulged in during their youths. What sometimes adult relaxations were enjoyed by a child who grew up to shoot a friend in the face, or to send others to fight an unending crusade against “evil,” or to see terrorists and traitors behind every dissenting opinion, or to use the deaths of 3,000 civilians in order to justify the deaths of another 10,000?

What violent porno game equivalents did the current inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW surreptitiously or openly play as a child? Did he tie the neighbor girl to a tree during a rousing game of Cowboys and Indians? Did he scornfully interrogate the even wimpier boy down the street while playing Cops and Robbers? Did he obsessively read only the bloodiest and most vengeance filled chapters of the Bible? Did he create exhaustive lists filled with the names of people he’d like to play real life games of Hangman with? Or was he basically a normal kid who played the games and laughed at the jokes of his generation while the adults around him filled his head with sometimes right, sometimes wrong opinions, prejudices, insights, and revelations about the world around him when they weren’t focusing on the big issues of the day – or, as often as not, wrapping themselves in feel good social outrage directed at a symptom and not a cause?

I’m none too impressed by the idea of any nation’s sex workers, or children, or women, or men being hurt or killed. Having organized and attended the funerals of friends and family members, as well as having nearly lost my own life, I take this whole being alive thing pretty seriously. I’ve watched as wars and battles played out on my TV screen – sometimes knowing people who were fighting in them — and I’ve played more than a few first-person shoot ‘em up games. Maybe one of the things that makes me different from other Americans is that I know the difference between reality and fantasy. Contrary to the opinion of those whose knees jerk at the very mention of sex or pornography, in spite of my many visits to strip clubs, regular viewing of hardcore pornography, and frequent discussions of exotic forms of sexuality and loving, I’ve never forgotten the gun safety lesson about not pulling the trigger unless you know what’s going to stop its movement. In spite of having killed many, many boss monsters, I have never managed to shoot a friend – or even a stranger — in the face. I have also never invaded another sovereign nation, never claimed nearly absolute governmental powers, never declared myself in direct contact with the Divine, never justified the deaths of innocents by citing the number of bad guys who might also have died, and I have certainly never thought that it was ok for me to hurt someone because I saw it done during a computer game.

Give me a frickin’ break, America – these games are rated “Mature” for a reason. The addition of hookers hardly makes Grand Theft Auto any more or less morally toxic given that the whole point of play is for the gamers to visit a consequence free environment where they can thumb their virtual noses at laws that protect people and property. But it’s still a fantasy world and, frankly, one played on a console that exists within a larger, far more real and far more scary world where real evils happen on a daily basis, often courtesy of the very people most stridently opposed to simulated violence — and sex of nearly any kind.

Maybe there shouldn’t be an age requirement for the purchase of “Mature” rated products. Maybe there should be an actual test for maturity. The problem with that, of course, is that the government would want to provide the definition. Given the logic games being played in the White House and on Capital Hill these days, I’m pretty sure that’s not a good idea…. which is not to say that the process wouldn’t be nearly as fascinating as the offensive games in question.