Sympathy for the Devils: To Catch A Predator

After a long night, I came home and flipped through the channels before I headed off to bed. It's the infomercial hour and pithy British hosts are trying to sell me knives, ladders, stock tips and, of coarse, ‘Snuggies'. Just as I was about done with all the nonsense, I stumbled on a super special documentary on MSNBC. The show was, in fact, a behind the scenes/best of clip show of the once-hit show, Dateline's To Catch a Predator. For those who were unfamiliar with the concept it goes like this: Dateline catches internet predators by posing as horny 13 year olds in chat rooms and when the pederasts want to meet with this fake girl, the Dateline crew has a house where our host Chris Hansen confronts them. That's when sadness, silliness and mostly hilarity ensue as we see these fools try every excuse in the book to get out of this dilly of a pickle. They cry, beg, and plead. Some, in font of damning evidence, flat out deny. When they try to leave the police get them and they are arrested.

Next!



The show was a major hit for NBC last year and I must admit to watching it with glee. But I had always had a rather uneasy feeling when I watched it. I had always attributed it to the look on a pedophile's face in what I thought was its natural habitat. While that obviously had something to do with my queasiness, other elements of the show added to my stew of despair but only latently. This ‘documentary' provided a sober view of the show's trappings and allowed me to glean the reasons that have, as yet, not made them selves apparent to me.

After a view minutes (OK, 45 but who's counting at 3am) I realized that To Catch a Predator has made me feel sorry of peddies. When it dawned on me that Chris Hansen caused me to take pity on child fuckers I asked my self the standard ‘what the fuck is wrong with me?' questions. "Why, despite the fact that even unrepentant murderers turn their heads up at pedophiles (and sometimes into them)? These are, after all, the worst of the worst.

My attitude towards pederasts is normally resolute. They try to fuck kids. That's a non-starter in my books. But when I watch Chris Hansen's dance of shame masked as an investigative interview I can't help but feel a little sorry for the poor bastards.

NBC probably would say that they are doing an enormous good for the community and the population at large and I fully agree. Dateline locks up dozens of child lovers and in doing so give many victims some solace and save hundreds of potential victims from every having they peddies near them. But if this is just a public service, I have just a few questions for Chris Hansen and the good people at Dateline NBC: Why is there NBC official To Catch a Predator T-shirts for sale at the NBC Rockefeller Centre lobby gift store? I know that the show was very popular but why was it on 5 times a week? Why do you interview them at all? There is nothing that they can say that will be helpful to the police. The cops do their own interview afterwards anyways. Why add more shame? Why during sweeps, when everything was working fine (the pedophiles were still lining up to get caught) did you feel the need to spice things up by having a decoy girl lure the peddies further into the living room? And why have you made light of the whole sordid affair on shows like 30 Rock (NBC owned) or when you pretended to catch Conan O'Brien with the same set up when he hosted the Emmys?

 

The answers are plain to see. C.R.E.A.M. I don't begrudge Chris Hansen and Dateline for trying to make a quick buck. But by exploiting the most hated and exiled people they feel that anything goes. They are wrong. There is line and in my opinion, mocking and ridiculing people on national television crosses it. And, what's more, it covers itself in the cloth of altruistic journalism. All this forces me to see the ‘predators' as the victims. And that makes me sick.

Thanks a lot Chris Hansen,

Asshole.