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I recently read the article by Stephen Johnson of G4TV about the recently crown Miss America, Caressa Cameron from Virginia.  Ms. Cameron used the competition as a platform to speak out against video games.  She actually suggested parents should: "Take away the TV, take away the video games, set some standards for our children." She went on to suggest kids should be outside, "playing imaginary games with sticks in the street like I most of us did when we were little."

While Miss America's advice is relatively sensible, consider the source. Is Cameron suggesting that little girls should be discouraged from playing video games in favor of participating in beauty pageants?  In order to be a pageant queen like Cameron, you'd have to devote a considerable amount of time to all the skills needed for Miss America-hood. Like wearing a sparkly dress; and waving and walking at the same time. All that is time when you're not "playing imaginary games with sticks."

So Cameron is suggesting it's better for girls to bleach their teeth, scrub their personalities, and starve themselves to earn the right to parade around in front of America and Rush Limbaugh (a Miss America judge) in order to be rated and evaluated like heads of cattle than it is to play video games. I’d rather see my daughter taking out noobs with headshots in MW2 than teetering around on too-high high heels and being evaluated for her looks by old men.

Now as for the fact that for some reasons video games continue to get the bad wrap of teaching children bad values, whatever happened to the parent actually taking responsibility for their lack of parenting?  I have seen many individuals that have happily let their child play video games for hours on end just to get the child out of their hair.  What is that teaching kids?  Video games have some value to them.  Right now my kids are playing video games that are teaching them, math, spelling, problem solving skills, and so forth.  I am glad they love playing the games because since doing so their school desire to do their work has increased because they are learning in a fun way.  Now are they monitor as to how much time they spend playing those games of course!  Are they encouraged to play outside and have some good old fashion fun?  Yes!  So I really think that Ms. Cameron needs to pull her head out of the bucket and stick to world peace or something like that because she clearly doesn’t understand the world of gaming.
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