Actually Bob, Obama has blamed video games for a lack of exercise.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/06/16/president-obama-dont-spend-all-day-playing-video-games-go-exercise/
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/02/20/obama-campaign-theme-video-games-as-metaphor-for-underachievement
That's just two quick links because there is so much of this stuff. As I post about all the time, video games are the political boogieman of the current generation, because they are easy to attack as opposed to dealing with other biggier issues.
Obama tries to present himself as the "hip, with it" President, and appeal to slackers in muich the same way as Michael Moore, while at the same time being as bad, or worse, when it comes to targeting video games, and other kinds of fandom based behaviors.
As the first article tries to misdirect it goes on about how "there is nothing wrong with this message unless your a parent whose afraid of unknown unknowns" that's kind of BS. Kids stay inside with those video games largely because the days of the frisky kids running all over the neighborhoods having their adventures are gone. They were killed by laws, since after all people don't want kids running through their yards, especially given the liability it puts on the property owner (ie kid falls down or hurts themselves on a piece of garden equipment, it's the property owner's fault not the kid who shouldn't have been in the yard to begin with, as a result of various rulings). Not to mention all those civil liberties laws that make dealing with child predators nearly impossible, since you can't pro-actively pursue it an have to wait for someone to do something illegal... like actually molest a child. All the "Stranger Danger" stuff doesn't matter when we're in an era where the child predators have become advanced enough where they are more likely to just use a low voltage taser to subdue a kid given a moment alone, and then drag them into the van or car, rather than try and lure them in with candy. Basically a serious predator, white slaver, or other threat might be pretty rare in society but the law is inadequete to dealing with these problems where they exist, especially seeing as they have adapted to the point where some kid screaming "Stranger Danger" isn't a deterrant, they are prepared for it. Of course these things and others get into big issues. In order for kids to go outside do we remove laws for parental supervision due to the modern requirement of both parents working just to make ends meet? Make it the responsibility of the owner of playgrounds and such to ensure the safety of children, but also prevent towns and private owners from closing them down. Do we make it so that property owners have no legal rights if the person entering their property is young enough? Kids won't respect tresspassing laws, and the parents won't let them out to wonder if they are afraid of being held responsible. Do we allow pro-active enforcement of child molestation laws, allowing people to be run down and arrested for "obvious intent" rather than taking the reactive approach we do with everything else? Saying "video games are the problem, and why kids don't go outside, and thus responsible for obesity epidemics" is an easy dodge to avoid addressing those much bigger issues. It would probably be political suicide (at least for re-election chances) if a politician chose to take action on any one of those matters. Telling the crotchedy old man who got tired of those "damn kids" on his lawn and lawyered up that he now has to let them onto his property, and is what's more responsible for their potential injury? Millions upon millions of people are going to object to that on principle, if for no other reason that they have to work too, and will have nobody home to watch the kids that might get onto their land.... leading to unavoidable legal action from injuries that WILL happen, that the property owner could not even possibly prevent. Needless to say that is a "big issue" and no politician would ever weather that, or anything similar to it... as a result issues are left unresolved, and lead to other issues. We aren't even looking for a way to make that work fairly, because in the end lots of people will be upset no matter what you do.
The point of that rant is, that while Bob might have been being sarcastic, and knowing that such issues exist... just in case he somehow doesn't realize it (or other people don't get the issue), we're already going here.
As far as Mcdonalds goes, well there are other issues involved there as well. Sure, parenting is hard work, and parents have to learn to put their foot down. On the other hand it's a lot like the above, in a society where both parents work to make ends meet, that means not only does Junior as often or not wind up a latchkey kid, but there is nobody in shape to prepare proper meals. Add to it, the gender most emotionally and tempermentally geared to raising children: mothers, are discouraged from being home makers even when it's financially viable to do so. Every minute of every day we're subjected to propaganda telling women to go out and have a career, with homemaking being treated as something base and wrong. In a pinch men can be parents and stay home with the kids, but they are much less suited for it (and no, I'm not going to get into this right now). The bottom line is that again, we're looking at the destruction of the family structure by society, and needless to say there is fallout from that. With nobody to raise the children except maybe a couple hours a day, we're dealing with no supervision for them to go outside and play, and a case where dinner is a matter of various fast food and takeout places that can be visited on the way home from work, so everyone can have something in their belly before exhausted mom and dad collapse and get ready for another day in the grind tomorrow.
Even when you get past the whole "get back in the kitchen woman" negative stereotype of restoring the family unit, and open the door for men to potentially be doing the same thing, you still wind up with a situation where people are going to have kids, and there is going to be massive resistance to re-organizing society based around one working parent instead of two. For one it means a lot of workers leave the market, for another it means prices on everything are going to have to drop (and when is the last time you've seen that happen?, some would argue it's an economical impossibility), and it probably means laws preventing both parents from working as well in order to ensure the structure is maintained, and one thing people hate is being told they can't do something and will be forced not to by the goverment.
In the end, the problem is that we're looking at scapegoats, to avoid addressing the big issues. It's like that with everything. One of the weaknesses to a goverment with elected leaders is of course that we wind up with weak leaders who can't just out and make the hard desicians. There are many advantages to the way we do things, and we feel those pros outweigh the cons. If we didn't have leaders who had to constantly worry about societal approval and winning the next election we'd have all kinds of abuses that we don't see now, but at the same time the big issues would be less so, because the goverment could just drop the hammer and say "okay, this is how thing sare going to be" and look at the big picture, instead of immediate backlash.... for those who have taken politics this might sound familiar. As much as we might love our system here in the US (and other countries might love theirs) the bottom line is that the perfect system of running a goverment has yet to be invented, and when you look at how big issues are handled that becomes readily apparent.
