Fatality Senate Hearings

Lyrics

[Intro]
Dirksen Senate Office Building.
Room two-two-six.
December 9, 1993.
The air smells like hot dust and old paper.

[Verse 1]
Senator Joseph Lieberman leans into the microphone.
Senator Herb Kohl clears his throat.
On a rolling cart, two cathode ray tubes flicker to life.
One shows a girl in a bathroom, grainy FMV.
The other, a ninja pulling out a spine.
Howard Lincoln, Nintendo, hands folded, looking clean.
Bill White, Sega, ready to testify.
They’re here to talk about the corruption of youth.
They’re here to talk about blood on the carpet.

[Chorus]
A hearing for the children!
Panic on C-SPAN!
A threat to the fabric of the nation!
It's just pixels and politics and bad animation!
Whose spine is this? Whose blood is this?
Show me the body!

[Verse 2]
They pass around glossy photographs of the screen.
See the auger drill, the vampire's teeth.
See the digital dismemberment.
They don't understand the code.
They don't understand the quarters in the machine.
They just see the headline, the moral decline.
They call it an electronic addiction.
A new kind of interactive fiction.

[Chorus]
A hearing for the children!
Panic on C-SPAN!
A threat to the fabric of the nation!
It's just pixels and politics and bad animation!
Whose spine is this? Whose blood is this?
Show me the body!

[Bridge]
It was never about Night Trap.
It was never about Sub-Zero.
It was about a little black and white sticker on a box.
A letter for Mature, a letter for Teen.
So some committee can say they kept the country clean.
So Howard can point at Bill and Bill can point right back.

[Outro]
The TVs are switched off.
The VCRs stop whirring.
The transcripts are filed away.
Room two-two-six is empty again.
Just the smell of ozone.
And the ghost of a finishing move.
(Whispered) Finish him.