Is the president a video game hater?

Winda Benedetti Citizen Gamer • E-mail

For a guy who once said he hadn’t played a video game since “Pong,” President Barack Obama sure has a lot to say about video games these days.

Or at least, he has a lot to say ... for a commander-in-chief.

Alas, most of the time, the leader of the free world doesn’t seem to have much good to say about games.

On Tuesday, during a speech to school children, Obama urged the future of America to spend less time playing video games.

“I’ve talked about teachers’ responsibility for inspiring students and pushing you to learn,” he said. “I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track and you get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with the Xbox.”

His speech arrived as children across the U.S. have begun fastening thinking caps securely to their skulls and diving headlong back into school. So it’s certainly no surprise that the Dad-in-Chief would want to encourage the nation’s children to buckle down and focus on their education.

But as GamePolitics.com points out, Tuesday’s speech was not the first time Obama has made a point of pointing a judgmental finger at video games. The President has, on numerous occasions, used video games as an example of how the youth of America wastes its precious time. His standard mantra is: Spend less time playing games so you can spend more time doing important things.

In a Father's Day message, Obama told dads everywhere that, “We need to replace that video game with a book and make sure that homework gets done…” And in a speech to the American Medical Association, the prez said that kids should “step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside.”

But for many people — children and adults alike — playing video games is important. For them, it’s time well spent. So what should video game enthusiasts make of Obama’s anti-gaming pep talks. Is he a hater, like, for real?

Nintendo fanboy in disguise?
While gamers tend to start booing and hissing every time Obama utters a half-sentence about their favorite form of entertainment, I say, “Whoa there nelly!”

I think we should thank our lucky stars we have a leader who knows that video games exist in the first place. After all, our commander-in-chief seems to understand that an Xbox is not a device that tells us why airplanes fall out of the sky. And I call that progress.

Nintendo Say what? President Obama wants us to spend less time playing video games? But is solving brain-challenging puzzles in the excellent new game "Professor Layton and the Diaboloical Box" really a waste of time? Or is it just another way to give our brains a good workout?

More importantly, according to the New York Times political blog, Obama’s daughters are the proud owners of a Wii. And guess what? The President of the United States of America even admitted that he’s used the Nintendo machine himself to practice his bowling moves (bye-bye “Pong,” helloooo “Wii Sports”).

Don’t you see ... it all makes sense now! Clearly the president isn’t a hater … he’s just a Nintendo fanboy in disguise. What else could explain his repeated dissing of the Xbox?

To wit: In July, Obama had this to say at the NAACP’s 100^th Anniversary dinner: “For our kids to excel, we must accept our responsibility to help them learn. That means putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour.”

Yeah, like, total burn.

Microsoft has issued the following statement in response to the recent presidential bad-mouthing:

“We agree with President Obama that it is a time for families to work together to ensure kids use media in ways that are safer, healthy and balanced. To that end, earlier this year Microsoft launched GetGameSmart.com, where anyone can get information about using parental controls, such as the Xbox 360 Family Timer, so parents can set limits on what games their kids are play, and how much time they spend online.”

(Msnbc.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

Hold on a second. Now that I think about it, perhaps Obama is actually an Xbox fanboy. That is, I have a sneaking suspicion that the folks at Microsoft mayhap don’t mind the Xbox’s new status as the Kleenex of video game consoles. After all, the most powerful man in the world has begun to use the word “Xbox” as a generic term for all video games. Negative message or not, you just can’t beat that kind of product placement.

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