In yesterday's Hangout, however, Biden didn't condemn or criticize video games. Instead, he agreed with the industry: There's "no hard data" to support a relationship between video games and violence, he acknowledged. Citing a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics that found children who played video games for hours could demonstrate more aggressive behavior, he explained that the study doesn't link video games to gun violence. "There is no hard data as to whether or not these excessively violent video games in fact cause people to engage in behavior that is antisocial, including using guns," he said.

He did, however, criticize the entertainment industry for dodging research, saying, "The one thing that bothers me is there's part of the interest group population out there that are afraid of facts. Let the facts lead where they will and let the research be done," Biden said. "That's one of things that the president and I believe very strongly: Let the facts work."

"Let these people go out and look at the pathology that's behind this, if there is a pathology related to gun violence," Biden said. "We shouldn't be afraid of the facts."

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Those are pretty much the last factual statements you’re getting from me today, because we now enter the netherworld of opinion, contested research, prejudice and prevarication surrounding the issue of media violence, in which nobody knows anything and every utterance should be treated as dubious ass-covering.

Thursday’s White House meeting was one in a series of gatherings Biden is hosting as chair of a post-Newtown presidential task force on gun violence. Others may or may not have involved substantive discussion, but this one was evidently designed to placate people who are concerned about the effects of violent entertainment without actually broaching the topic. To go by the joint statement issued afterward by the showbiz bigwigs, it may have been the most guarded and noncommittal conversation in Washington history:

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