I also like how quick they are to call Senator Drole on his support for film censorship and paternalistic moralism, but take special care to never attack the idea of censorship itself. Instead of addressing the central problem here- whether state censorship of film and media is ever just- they leave it as is, preferring instead to focus on showing how Dole "got the film wrong" or "is a rightwing partisan derf derf ad hominem". The closest they get to actually saying anything of substance about censorship, in and of itself, is gibberish to the effect of "well, Tipper wants to censor THIS stuff over here, why not that too guys".

Another five stars for reminding me how evil the 90s were.

COUNTERPOINT: Kickass, while significantly better than the comic book it was based off of, was not that great! And he didn't pan Pink Flamingos, simply decided it was "unrateable" and therefore got zero stars.

pulp fiction is good.

I'm not saying they "support" censorship, at least not in the same way Dole or Lieberman did, I'm saying that they don't particularly want to oppose it, either. The whole "moral equivalence" argument, especially in this context, is utterly absurd without further qualifiers as to how genuine the suggestion is. Let's say I claimed to be against throwing Muslim Americans into camps, because we're not also considering throwing Evangelical Americans into camps. Am I making a statement about the absurdity of internment camps? Or am I tacitly acknowledging the utility of internment camps, and quietly suggesting that they be used for more "socially just" purposes? There's a big difference between the two messages, and it may not always be clear in context which one we're being asked to accept. It's not like Siskbert are above doing the latter; they use a "moral equivalence" argument in precisely this manner later in the video, when they discuss Washington's opposition to "fantasy violence" and then use that to springboard off into a totally genuine (I assume?) pro-gun control bit.

And KickAss was too a great movie. It had guns and 'splosions and little girls swearing.

I mean, really. One hour of this stuff, and the only concrete messages I got were "Bob Dole is a poop head" and "violence is bad *unless* it's tempered with stuff that tickles my monocle".

Pretty much. By 1994, these guys had spent the last decade and a half watching the most horrible action movies Hollywood had ever produced. It's no wonder they took such a strong stance against mindless movie violence.

Ebert's a shit for putting spoilers in his movie reviews on a dismaying basis (check out his review of James Gunn's "Super" for an example), but on the other hand I remember thinking it was significant that I agreed with his one-star review of Bad Boys 2. If I had been 15 when that movie came out I would've thought of him as a doddering old man for finding it distasteful, but hey: sometimes using violence as entertainment really is a shitty way to make a movie.

The worst action movies ever made came out in the 80s?

What the FUCK???

Void just came here in a Delorean. He isn't aware yet that things have gotten so bad in the future year 2012, that we look back at the 80's wishing we had it that good.

So Commando, Predator, Robocop, Indiana Jones, and DIE HARD only became good when compared to today?

I don't want to explain my joke.

If you haven't seen This Film Is Not Yet Rated, it involves a lesbian couple detective team who outs the identities of the MPAA censors. They find out what happened when This Film Is Not Yet Rated is submitted to the MPAA for rating.

It's glorious.