Karl Klockars

Goddamnit, Dateline. Another fucking internet-predator hour?

Preface: Standard declaration of disgust at pedophiles, e-stalkers, e-creeps, anything sexual involving children, etcetera. Sexual predators and child molesters are way worse on the felon scale than things like murder and bank robbery and such, but maybe that’s just me.

But for gods sake, NBC–you’re doing the unthinkable. You’re making me not care about this stuff. Just stop, please. Someone in the newsroom tell this Chris Hansen guy that this isn’t Woodward & Bernstein style investigative journalism. This is lazy work, the equivalent of the guys that go on “safari” where leopards are chained to the ground or doped up and then fat men with guns stand around and kill at their leisure.

Man, I feel dirty even coming close to anything defending the guys that are being caught. Don’t get me wrong–every single guy that shows up on this show that isn’t a cop or a newsguy should go away for a long, long time. But this whole series stinks of opportunism and smelling the bait of a legal loophole which gives us the complete right to stare at this train wreck.

When these shows first came on in September I sat through one hour of it, getting that icky feeling in my stomach and feeling creeped out by all these guys, people that didn’t fit any of the pre-concieved notions of the “dirty old man.” And I made the appropriate “eww” and “oh, that sick fuck.” But at the same time, I thought to myself, “How can NBC get away with this?”

There’s a large page on MSNBC’s website all about these shows. The rebroadcasts, the stings, the houses used–there’s a related story about a couple that had their house as one of the sting location and now they’re hoping it’ll increase the resale value. A child molestor got naked in your garage? Yeah, honey! Another 10k to the bottom line! That’s pretty sick, too.

The one section I can’t find is “How NBC is legally able to do these things.” The short answer: a legal loophole that has to do with “enticement” versus “entrapment” and things done in the committing of a crime is a vis-a-vis waiver of ones rights. Oh…right…that’s why COPS blurs the faces, right? To protect the “innocent?”

I’m guessing no one expects anyone to give a shit about these guys that are being tried and convicted on national tv. That the assumption is that these accusations are so vile, so terrible, so disgusting that there’s carte blanche to make a statement about all this shit.

And they’re right. No one does give a shit. I don’t give a shit. But why does it make me feel like NBC is doing something…wrong? I don’t know. There are men on TV right now walking around naked. Bringing in booze. Bringing flowers and condoms to where “a kid” is. Who cares if these guys get set on fire and hung up by their toenails?

To be honest, I’m kinda surprised that the ACLU hasn’t stepped up and done something more public about these prime-time trials, but these guys might as well be unpersons. In that grand Orwellian tradition, these guys might as well let the earth open wide and swallow them whole. It’s better off in the long run, because for however many years they have left here, every person that looks at them, talks to them, checks them out at the video store, the guy will be thinking “did they see me on TV?”

Interestingly enough, I just searched the national registry of sex offenders for two of the guys on one of the MSNBC pages…and found nothing. Strange, huh? Sure, maybe not convicted yet, maybe hasn’t gone to trial…but still, curious. Gonna have to check in a year or so. We’ll see.

Maybe I’m just a dirty cynic. But to take these things at face value from the show that threw explosives in the back of a truck and pawned it off as an expose about fuel tanks–maybe I’m the only one that wants to know more. Know all the facts, all the paperwork. And maybe ask the cops why they tackled that guy in the driveway when he wasn’t running, wasn’t acting defensive, was putting his hands up.

And maybe ask why they interviewed him with blood running down his face. Run the mugshot with the blackened, swollen eye. You can’t tell me that there wasn’t a producer back there saying “man, that’s great TV.” You can’t tell me that there wasn’t a producer doing the story in DC saying “man, it’d be great if we could get a big politician.” And I can’t say I wouldn’t act the same way. Damn this bloodsucking industry. But you look at Chris Hansen and you think that behind that stern, how-dare-you exterior, there’s a guy that thinks he’s making his career on these stories.

And he probably is.

But at the same time that these stories are running, someone’s making a buck off the voyeuristic degradation of these guys – who, to defend my own idiot thoughts again, have placed themselves at the mercy of the world in making the choices that they made. There’s something dirty and sexual about the idea of a man in a dark suit smoking a cigar looking at the ratings for these shows saying “Damn, Hansen, you’re onto something. Go out and talk dirty to some middle aged men as much as you want!”

Or maybe it bugs me that the more these shows run–especially reruns, as it turns out this show was–the more and more they seem like attempts to make cash off these peep shows. Not do anything good with journalism but turn it into a freak show hosted by Stone Phillips. That it’s just a parade of sick fucks that people will watch.

You want to make the point that these guys are everywhere? You’re making it, NBC, and at the same time you’re certainly making the point that you’ll do anything to pimp it over and over and over again.