Much ado about gaming: Are you 'M' enough to play?

If you ask a teen what the "M" rating on a game means, he'll tell you: Hide it from Mom and play it with the headphones on. That's the good stuff. If it's not "M" it's probably "Hello Kitty's Cupcake Bunny Picnic Parade 2: Sparkle Love Rainbow Day" or "The Sims: Accountancy Fever." Audit books in real time across a network! Yeah, right.

The rating might be catnip, but it's not always honored; somehow kids manage to get the games. (Or find them in Dad's sock drawer.) Seeking to keep "Mature" games out of the hands of Impressionable Youth, a law was passed to fine merchants who sell or rent the discs to juveniles. The fine? A crushing $25. I'd say the law was struck down this week, but I don't want the column to get an M rating.

The law was gently overturned.

The ruling included a brief bit of familiar equivalence. You know the argument: This venerable old famous thing is violent, so this new violent thing must be accorded the same protections.

Wrote Judge Roger Wollman of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals: "Indeed, a good deal of the Bible portrays scenes of violence, and one would be hard-pressed to hold up as a proper role model the regicidal Macbeth. Although some might say that it is risible to compare the violence depicted in the examples [of violent games] offered by the State to that described in classical literature, such violence has been deemed by our court worthy of First Amendment protection, and there the matter stands."

Well, yes. Anyone who's read "Mack-Daddybeth: Grand Theft Kingdom" knows this. Ridin' around in his horse-drawn whip, whackin' kings. The Bible? It's all about smitin' and fightin' and pilin' up mad stacks of Dead Pharaohs.

Oh, please. The Bible: "A tenth part of their number was cast into the pit, and sore were their hearts and loud their lamentations, so they didst gird their loins anew awaiting the end of the sentence." Game: every piece of processing power is used to show an alien's head removed with a shoulder-mounted rocket. It is a risible distinction.

The law probably would have accomplished little anyway, and seems to be based on the undie-bundles people get over a few unrepresentative games. People used to get the vapors over DOOM, which now looks about as violent as ketchup drizzled on Lego blocks.

Games have become much more sophisticated since then, of course. There's still a level of make believe -- in a World War II game I played recently, you could get shot 10 times and recover by hiding behind a rock until you felt better. Conversation with vets indicates that strategy rarely worked. But even the make-believe can't hide the lurid, vulgar, amoral sociopathy of criminal-simulators like "Grand Theft Auto" and ... well, the other games with "Grand Theft Auto" in their title.

These games, however, are less numerous than you'd think. There are only a handful of games marked "Adult Only." Go to the store, check out the titles: "Xtreme Mackerel Slapping" would get an M for "simulated fish-based violence." Wii Bowling is probably a soft M, what with all the simulated aggression against polished dowels. With a little Internet research, parents can figure out which games to forbid.

Or can they? Do kids have the right to the games? The article about the ruling cited a July 2006 ruling that said "violent video games were protected speech, even for children." Yes, it's right there in Article 3: "Youtfs shall have the righte to Diverse and Sundry pamphlets of Fisticuffery and other forms of boisterous Delighte." You can say the Framers didn't anticipate the Xbox, but Ben Franklin probably figured out a way to tie a kite string to a toy soldier and use lightning to knock it down.

Barring a Constitutional amendment that keeps "Grand Theft Tricycle" out of the hands of toddlers, it's up to parents. Two things to keep in mind: I surveyed a few video-store clerks about their rental policies on M games, and most got that blank look of terror: I can't say anything without the home office's approval! Go away!

Also: not even family-friendly games are safe. I was playing "Roller Coaster Tycoon" with Child the other day, and caught her picking up amusement park patrons and dropping them in the lake. It's not an amusement park game, it's a drowning simulator!

It's all our fault for playing "Hangman" with kids on a piece of paper. What were we thinking? "Lengthy Sentence with Supervised Work-Release and Victim Reimbursement," that's what we should have been playing. With a blunt pencil. You could put someone's eye out with a sharp one.