Drink & Drive Your Way Through Grand Theft Auto!

Researching our book, we chronicled four separate, er, pastoral DUI incidences in which suspects slowly trundled away from authorities on lawn mowers or tractors at speeds that wouldn't test the warranty fine-print of even the cheapest, Chinese-made pacemakers. Most recently, a Michigan man with a bellyful of wine braved a snowstorm on his John Deere, and was busted en route to a nearby store.

Today's focus though, is on a related scourge afflicting rural and urban culture alike-- violent video games, in particular the popular series Grand Theft Auto.

Since youth culture emerged like so much acne, many a finger has been pointed at everything from the bikini and drag racing, to the broad chest of the guy who kicks sand in your face at the beach, and lately Facebook as the cause of whatever prevailing social ill. Now, the very latest calamity befalling youth culture appears to be the deviant, action adventure, role-playing game.
[Editor's Note: We acknowledge, given the age of a typical gamer is somewhere in the early 30s-- many of the same demographic having recently hung up their skateboards due to chronic lower back problems-- the term 'youth' might be a bit of a misnomer.]

The latest entry in the Grand Theft Auto video game series has many critics wondering how many more banana peels line that already slippery slope toward social upheaval.

Its maker, Rockstar Games---rather than showing greater social awareness and allowing users to jack up more green-friendly modes of transport like diesel buses or perhaps a bicycle---is instead allowing gamers to engage in, well, degenerate 'rock star'-like shenanigans. These include driving drunk, going to a strip club, flying a helicopter and fleeing from the cops--in short, recreating Motley Crue's 1987 world tour, ideally, during the course of one game.

According to Canadian Press, one of the game's characters, an Eastern European thug named 'Niko Bellic', has already become an icon to millions of viewers who've watched official trailers over 40 million times online. As Bellic, you can engage in a relatively benign mission, such as whacking a rival laid up in hospital, in addition to the usual fair: killing innocent bystanders, cops, hookers, etc as a latter-day couch-bound, cheese-doodle noshing Travis Bickle. The game, available for the first time on both Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, also contains 'sex secret scenes', which aren't too secret anymore (Sorry).

Rockstar's vice president notes, rather un-ironically: "We felt we owed it to the [fans] to have a game that was really amazing and really pushed the limit. It would've been foolish to rush something out and disrespectful to the audience."