Legislation to Ban Video Games

Rep. Dewaynus Holm (R - Bogalusa) was known in the Louisiana House as being a bit of a lazy and retrograde thinker; however one time he manfully jumped into the breech and came to the aid of lonely teen girls. Kind of like a blind hog finding an acorn in the forest.

It started when he overheard his daughter Mitzi and her friends lamented their lack of dates on Friday night; and he was an old-fashioned father, yessiree!

He further eavesdropped, and thought that he got to the root of the problem. They boys spent all their time playing video games on their X-Boxes, and not courting* teen girls like they should. And presto! We have the emergence of a falling birth rate which would result in fewer grandchildren to grace parents' old age!

Zounds! And holy cow! (Dewaynus had a rich vocabulary from having read a lot of pre-Victorian literature.)

So being a selective governmental interventionist, he decided to get to the root of the problem in a manner typical of a legislator. Yes, he would sponsor a bill to ban devices that play video games. It was a long time since he had played Frogger!

So he wrote a bill, and after politicking behind the scenes, he put it before the Louisiana House.

"Fellow members of the House, I offer this bill to ban video games as a means to redress a possible threat to the well-being of our daughters and the good of the state.  Fewer girls are being courted After all, if teenaged girls are unhappy, their grades suffer, they spend a lot of time moping, and some might turn to non-Biblical sex to fill in the gap! I ask for your support for H-29."

Rep. Horace Watson (D - Bunkie) countered with a comment, "I am surprised that my esteemed colleague from Bogalusa would move to curtail a harmless pastime and thus circumscribe personal liberty. Where is your Libertarianism now? And in the process increase the possibility of teens engaging in s- * - x outside of lawful marriage."


Rep. Henri Arnaud (R - Thibodaux) raised a possible problem: would banning X - Boxes stimulate bootlegging from nearby Texas and Mississippi? Nothing pisses the Louisiana legislature more than outsiders contributing to crime that they can't get kickbacks from.

But Rep. Sylvia Avery (R - Bossier City) commented, "In my opinion, a bigger problem comes from football and basketball. Boys get so involved with practicing for those sports that they're too tired to do schoolwork or to date. We should consider limiting high school football!"

A shiver of horror, like a blast of arctic air, went through the Louisiana House like Marley's ghost had paid a visit.

"We can't do that! Think of the trickle-down effect on L.S.U. football!"

"That would make Baton Rouge even duller than it is now!"

Clearly, the legislators were in session too long. This in-House debate made the news on major state news channels like WBRZ-TV and WWL-TV. And WDSU-TV made a special editorial asking for help with the problem by requiring teen boys to date at least one girl a month. LGBT people objected. 

Anyway, raising the specter of cutting back on football did result in a watered-down version of the bill that made playing video games legal only from Sunday to Thursday. Even the Louisiana House knows how to compromise. 

*Dewaynus Holm was rather retro in his vocabulary.