There's a software patch that lets characters in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas "simulate sex." That is to say, you can see pornography enacted by pixellated images hot enough to get Hillary Clinton's knickers in a twist.

Christine Hurt thinks Hillary's case of the vapours is unpresidential. Will Baude opines that her draconian speech restrictions may be unconstitutional. Me, I just think Hillary's about fifteen years too late for the "sex in video games" craze. To my fellow bloggers' justified condemnation I'd just add that griping about sex in video games just makes Hillary her age.

Look, not only was there more sex in Infocom's Leather Goddesses of Phobos, but that game often turns up available online for free! And over a decade of bondage in text-based adventures hardly seems to have put a dent in the national moral character. Certainly not as much as, say, ten million internet porn sites available to any adolescent boy whose hormonal drive outweighs his scruples at declaring himself 18 to a click-through entry screen. Or even a nation riveted by nightly news tales of oral sex and cigar frolics.

(OK, I admit: this whole post has been an attempt to introduce a new generation of Young Democrats to Leather Goddesses of Phobos, possibly the silliest combination of light bondage and space opera since William Shatner stopped kissing blue-skinned venus-babes. And if I get a hit from naughtybill.clintonlibrary.gov, I'm going to give the Senator something to really complain about.)

For those who sincerely want to know what is making Hillary blush, you can read a gamer's description of the patch, or even download a short video that shows you what the Senatoress doesn't want your kids to see. I suppose I should give an obligatory Not Safe For Work warning, but don't expect anything too exciting. Also, it takes forever to download.

If your kids can be corrupted by this, please send a complaint to your local Bureau of Infernal Quality Control, as their assigned tempters have not been working too terribly hard.

For completely losing the plot, however, you have to hand it to Matthew Yglesias, who thinks that by mocking Clinton I'm under the spell of the vast left-wing conspiracy:

I think Ezra Klein's shrugging attitude toward Hillary Clinton's campaign against Grand Theft Auto is a serious mistake. To be sure, he's quite right to say that nothing Senator Clinton is proposing is genuinely worth getting agitated about. But for this to work as a repositioning effort it needs to be condemned by young people and video game fans. That's the proof she's a "different kind of Democrat" and/or that the party has learned its lesson and is now sensitive to the needs of America's parents.

And take a look at that video clip above: is the wedge problem here really the game mod? How about the first few frames, in which the main character is carrying a shotgun around a neighborhood in broad daylight, seemingly to a date?