Stan Lee is a God to millions of geeks everywhere and a seemingly harmless, eccentric old man to the rest of us. Lee is the former president and CEO of Marvel comics, the publisher that brought us such legends as Spiderman, the X Men and Squirrel Girl (seriously).
Why is a washed up old geek in the news I hear you ask? Well, apparently the great state of California is attempting to restrict the availability of violent video games. That is to say, the state governed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who appeared in a boat load of violent films, most of which had videogame adaptations, thinks that games are bad and should be stopped before they harm the kiddywinks.
Crazy ol? Uncle Stan posted the following message on the Video Game Voters Network?s website, which interestingly had never been heard of until this story:
My memory has always been lousy and it’s not improving with age. But it’s good enough to remember a time when the government was trying to do to comic books what some politicians now want to do with video games: censor them and prohibit their sales. It was a bad idea half a century ago and it’s just as bad an idea now.
Despite how liable he is to wet himself, Grampa Simpson Stan Lee is right, the politicians are overstepping the mark by using games as a scapegoat and this new bill is a blatant attempt to appease conservative voters. He also found time in his open letter to accuse the politicians of doing all this just to drum up positive headlines, to ensure they get re-elected and that 50 years on, politicians still haven't changed.
And he's right, after all, 70 or so years ago we saw another Austrian with a dubious past and some right wing ideas get elected to power. He did manage to write a book though. I'm not convinced the Governator can actually write.