Jon Stewart Tramples on Free Speech and Comes Out in Favor of Censorship

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On last night’s The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart took up the recently decided Supreme Court case Brown v. EMA which dealt with the restriction of sales of “violent video games” to children.  The court decided in a 7 to 2 decision that it violates free speech to limit the sales, but also that it’s a parent’s responsibility to make these decisions.

Justice Scalia put it succinctly and eloquently in the decision where he wrote:

Video games qualify for First Amendment protection. Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium. And “the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary” with a new and different communication medium.

Those same protections that apply to Stewart’s nightly show apply to video games, and by not defending free speech in every form, that makes him a hypocrite.

Here’s the Stewart clip.

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Ironically, Stewart’s guest was Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard and one of the loudest proponents of the war in Iraq.  So, to sum up his view, real war and death = good, fake violence = bad.

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Stewart is a known video game fan too.