I'm a bit bothered that people would find it enriching or diverting to make their character murder prostitutes and such.

I'm pretty sure no one would argue that it was "enriching or diverting". I also think Clark-Flory misspoke when she said that this represents men's "fantasies", though I generally agree with the tone of her post and commend her for not towing the standard feminist line. What would have been more accurate to say is that it satisfies our base curiosity and fascination with things that are extreme and forbidden precisely because they are those things, and the game does not present that kind of conduct as something normal or "enriching".

Why do you think people look at things like 2girls1cup or tubgirl even after being told that they are disgusting? It's not because they've been walking around secretly fantasizing about those things. But when you're presented with the idea and possibility of seeing something like that, it's just interesting to push the boundaries of your imagination. I don't go around fantasizing about killing people, but I can't honestly say that the idea of what such an experience is like holds absolutely no objective interest for me.

So my point is that people don't normally have these fantasies, but that the idea of a hyper-realistic simulation in which to carry out extreme and absurd acts that you would never perform in real life holds a great deal of appeal. And to those who never feel the least bit of inclination to just wonder about things like this, congratulations on embodying our society's ideal of a repressed, imaginatively impoverished Puritan automaton.

As a side note, I have anecdotal evidence that American women complain of sexual frustration because their men would rather play video games. This is another thing that exasperates me. I just can't fathom it. Has anybody else heard this?

It's only anecdotal, but I'm pretty sure it mostly deals with MMORPG's, and World of Warcraft in particular. Those games are somewhat of a social commitment to the people you're playing with and can't be paused, so if you've spent an hour getting 20 people for a raid that you'll have to start over if you leave, sex can wait. I doubt very much that you'd find a guy anywhere who'd be unwilling to pause GTA for some real-life action, unless there were some other reason.

Also, hooray for Road Rash and for your screen name. The nineties were truly the best decade.

I don't think Reid is consciously lying. It's just that, in Harry Reid's world (and in the world of the Democratic leadership generally), things like warrantless eavesdropping, the abolition of habeas corpus, telecom amnesty, the corrupt politicization of the Justice Department, chronic lying under oath, and the legalization of torture just don't exist. They don't matter. They're non-issues.

I would suggest a different and even more depressing interpretation: Reid did not bring up any of these things because he implicitly considers them to be war issues. That is, he and the other Democrats have wholly absorbed the argument that Bush & Co. have been hammering into everyone's heads for years - that warrantless wiretapping, increased surveillance, unlimited executive power, and erosion of basic civil rights are all crucial parts of the War Effort, and to oppose them is to oppose the troops, etc.

Looks like Paul Dirks beat me by two minutes and said it better than I could have. Nevermind.

It would be ridiculous for Obama not to offer Hilary the VP slot at this point. That might be the only reason she stayed in the race, and now it's pretty much the only way to unify the party. As much as we may dislike her, there are many ways in which it would help. You'd get more women, hispanics, and those all-important working-class whites, plus it would help Obama's experience problem and perhaps she could strike back at Republican attacks while allowing Obama to maintain his above-the-fray image. Plus a lot of her 'negatives' would no longer matter, because it would just make the Republicans look silly to be attacking the VP candidate. It wouldn't be so bad, maybe.

Of course, I'm talking about what's politically expedient. In a perfect world, the VP would be Kucinich but for some reason we've all decided he's 'unelectable' and not to be taken seriously.