Your2ndPlace

If it were just any crockpot, I wouldn't be worried - but when a congressman urges the FTC to send out parental advisories on Second Life, it makes me pause. First - children should simply not be in Second Life - there's a teen grid for teenagers, of course. And everyone wonders how to keep children away from anything even remotely related to sex - but we adults all know, or should, that this will not happen unless you lock them in the basement like an inbred son (Mandatory Harold and Kumar reference).

A parental advisory? How does one send out a parental advisory? Is there a massive email list that every parent in the world is on? Or perhaps there's an automated SMS system that tells parents what's going on?

Or maybe - just maybe - parents should be aware of what their children are doing? I know, it sounds silly, but the last I heard parents were the legal guardians of children. Legal. Guardian. More importantly, they are supposed to be... parents. I realize that cultural definitions may vary around the world, but if a definition of 'parent' doesn't involve the key phrase 'responsibility' - well, shucks, Congressman Mark Kirk has a point and the government should simply become a daycare for parents who can't abide 18 years of what some sweaty bodies created while interlocked in the same activity that children are being protected from.

I suppose what parents should really be asking is whether they want the government of their country doing the parenting. I suppose the true parental advisory should be:

If you can't raise you're children, your government will do it for you.

I wonder when people gave up on their own responsibilities...

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