Chalk one up for good taste. Thanks to recent team efforts by Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman and media watchdog groups like the Parents’ Television Council, the dastardly video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" was slapped with what hopefully becomes its death sentence. This game - a portion of many a teen’s video game library – had its user rating justifiably upped from "mature" to "adults only" by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. Following this change and the ensuing news media bloodbath, the game was immediately and ceremoniously pulled from shelves at Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy.

This much-needed ratings change and distribution chain upheaval was facilitated by the fact that not only did this game perpetuate the morbid GTA franchise norms of carjackings, flamboyant murder, the abuse of women, and sex with prostitutes, but it also contained a hidden hardcore porn video which could be released by entering certain codes into the game system. So, a game that was once really bad became much worse.

Why the ESRB took so long to nail GTA is anyone’s guess. The "mature" rating that has historically been held by the GTA franchise implies that a game is appropriate for those 17 and older. How are the aforementioned acts of glorified abuse and manslaughter appropriate for 17 year olds, nearly all of whom are still in high school and have yet to develop appropriate social behavior and understanding? Worse yet, the evil that is Grand Theft Auto is easily propagated amongst other teens as the 17 year olds pass the games amongst their younger classmates. And, who’s to say 17 year olds are the only adolescents who own this game? Over five million units of this game have been sold since it hit the stores last fall. That is a very substantial volume, one which could easily lead us to believe that many parents have purchased this game for their teens who are unable to purchase this game at stores on their own.

This brings us to the a key point: no Senator, no parents organization, and no ratings board can control what our youth come in contact with…the ultimate responsibility of filtering what kids see or don’t see belongs to the parents and no one else. Unfortunately, this belief seems to have gone to the wayside. We have become a media driven society whereby youth are exposed to thousands of signals and impulses daily from TV, radio, the internet, and computers. All said mediums have become their primary hobbies, interests and pursuits. At the same time that this electronic transformation has occurred, the rigid ways of parenting have seemed to slacken considerably and quite a few parents use the media devices as a convenient means to keep their children amused and entertained…essentially babysat. Therefore, this modern parent has placed responsibility upon the media sources themselves to determine what sort of imagery or messages the child consumes. A blind eye has been turned to what many children take-in and - in a case such as this where the judgmental eye of ESRB failed - it ultimately comes back to haunt all parents as their children come into contact with graphic, violent, and sexual imagery that no adolescent should see or hear.

Sure, at first glance, Rockstar Games (the manufacturer of Grand Theft Auto), the ESRB, and the many venues who sell this and similar games are to blame for perverting our youth. After all, they are the ones who created and disbursed such tripe. But, if society really wanted to place the blame it would place it on the parents who failed to get really involved in their offspring’s lives, who failed to see what their kids are doing, who failed in their buying practices, who failed to restrict what their kids come in contact with, and who, when all was said and done, failed…as parents.