Kobe Bryant Is Not To Be Blamed For Shilling For A Video Game

Fresh off of winning his fifth NBA championship, while his team enjoys a fairly dominant run atop the league, Bryant is now the target of the slings and arrows of outrageous opinion once again.

This time, the dastard has had the temerity to appear in a video game advertisement.

Judging from the faux-outrage his appearance has generated, one might think he accidentally killed someone while driving drunk (nope, no calls for any heads there) or killed some dogs (ahh, there's the acceptable level of bile).

The video game in question, which I'll not name because they've already received enough free press from this tempest in a teacup, features actors and celebrities in a combat situation, holding and firing automatic weapons during a war-like cacophony of destruction. Bryant is one of the celebrities in the spot, and he is featured just long enough for one to recognize who he is.

The point of the ad is simple: if you play this game, you will be as close to real combat as you'd care to get, and even celebrities play this game.

Then, predictably, came the outcries. What about the children, wails one. What about the children who will see this and want to be soldiers, weeps another. What about the children who see this and want to play with guns, sobs a third. Won't soldiers see this and be offended (the ones who don't actually play games like this, I mean, as I digress...)? Won't this take business away from gun makers, er, I mean, create more business in that booming eight-year-old gun market?

Stop it.

This is an adult world. We live in an adult society. Grown folks run things around here. This may come as a complete shock to you, but it's not our job to make the world safe for children. It's our job to prepare children for life as adults in a dangerous world.

This game is not meant for children. It is clearly marked so on the package. It has been tested and rated as being appropriate for adult usage. Thus, the creators of this game have every right to market their product to adults, adults who clearly know the drastic difference between fictionalized violence and the genuine article.

But children will see the advertisement and want the game, sobs one.

To which I respond, so what?

Lots of stuff gets advertised on television that children want but can't have. Cars get advertised every day that some little gear-head will see and want, and it doesn't mean that mom and dad are going to run down to the car lot and get their ten-year-old a sports car. Athletic shoes are a billion dollar business, but, thankfully, some parents don't feel the urge to put a pair of $200+ shoes on their nine-year-old's still-growing feet.

The problem isn't with this video game, or with Bryant's appearance in it. The problem is the overwhelming amount of adults lacking the testicular fortitude to simply say no to their children. This wouldn't be a problem if enough adults would simply supervise their children and give them age-appropriate activities designed to prepare them for adulthood and not merely to prolong childhood.

This includes supervising what their children see on television and on the internet, and, yes, that will mean almost constant supervision.

But I don't have that kind of time, cries one.

Then you shouldn't have had a child. Raising children is not the responsibility of the school or the state, but the parents. The makers of this video game have every right to market it to adults who clearly know the difference between what is real and what is not.

Parents have the obligation to teach their children the difference, and the responsibility not to allow their children access to things meant for adults, even if it means sacrificing time to do so.

Sources:

Yahoo! Sports