Right-wing hate media: the new violent video games?

[Rocknrule]

I'm sure most of you remember not long ago when lawmakers and media pundits were blaming school shootings, especially Columbine, on Marilyn Manson and video games like Doom and Mortal Kombat. In a couple of cases, the families of school shooting victims even tried suing movie and video game makers, claiming that their products were directly responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. They lost of course, because of this little thing called personal responsibility (not to mention the 1st Amendment), and I can't help but draw parallels between that and the violent, "vote them out or kill them" dog whistle rhetoric we hear from Palin, Beck, Coulter, etc. I was against the idea of holding entertainers liable for violent acts, but I think there is a huge difference between the two situations. Video game makers create violent images strictly for entertainment purposes, they are not using inflammatory rhetoric and "hint hint nudge nudge" tacticts to prod people into commiting violent acts like the right-wing is. I would honestly like to see a class-action lawsuit brought against Fox, Palin, and others: even if it didn't win, it would still send them a message that trying to incite their listeners to do their dirty work is NOT okay.