>:-(A NIMBY Backlash, and The Missing Crusade):-<

One of the things I miss about Monday to Friday hours in the trapped, dusty flourescence of my office job is access to opinion. Mine grows stale and fixed in the absence of contrast and comparison. Having watched three or four of the "To Catch a Predator" segments produced by Dateline NBC, I think I can surmise what would have been the chatter among the cubicles each morning after the shows, particularly in the knots of women among my co-workers.

E-mails from viewers provide the vitriol I've missed in the copy room. Viewers thank the producers, using words like "commendable", while MSNBC's Dan Abrams struggles to find another side (the predators') to the story in order to cover things fairly. He finds the arrests and prosecutions "refreshing". The level of justice most of the e-mailers seem to seek is of the more primitive sort, vengeful and violence-based--a viewer moved to commend Dateline is the sort who prefers Old Testament-style justice.

I can't deny that, on the first couple of viewings, I too clapped my hands at the cuffing of the married soldier with a teen-aged daughter, that I crowed at the confrontation and the climax of the camera's appearance, boom-mike hovering into view as the crew materializes. It is as if, among all life's difficulties, follies and missed connections, something is finally working as it should--success in large letters and full color.

At first, none of the doubts and concerns I now have with this programming surfaced. Without the foil my co-workers would have provided, my contrarian nature slept, and I exulted with America at our safer streets and chat-rooms. My unease at this method of portraying and addressing the problem of sexual predation sprang up finally when I saw a brief mention of a sting-gone-wrong, culminating in the suicide of a DA in the town of Murphy, Texas. Caught in the web strung by Perverted Justice and NBC, prosecutor Bill Conradt opted out of the inevitable shame and punishment, permanently, by the timely application of a bullet to his brain.

Part of what's troubling the residents of Murphy is that, by setting up a decoy home in their town, NBC and Perverted Justice may have been guilty of exposing the children of Murphy to increased danger by actually luring predators into the town. In addition, Geraldo intimated, many residents were waking up to the idea that NBC might treat such stings as mere entertainment, an opportunity to sell commercial time to advertisers. Apparently, it takes a death to awaken such misgivings. Still, the unseemly nature of humiliation for fun and profit seems to escape most folks outside of Murphy.

From the accidental slip-and-fall of a stranger in the street to the fates of celebrities and countries, we find common ground in our schadenfreude. And it was this feeling that welled up in me as I watched that first man's face fall as Chris Hanson stepped from behind the curtain. There are moments, however, where pointing fingers and glee are neither necessary nor proper. There is something wrong, sinful perhaps, about the orchestration and enjoyment of another's humiliation. A long time ago, I read that some Jews consider that the worst of sins is public humiliation of another person. For them, that act is akin to killing that person, and either is unforgivable. I am not a Talmudic scholar, but there is a sense in me, born of the red-faced moments from school years common to us all, that we have much to learn about our use of humilation.

As I type, the Murphy, Texas episode is on the television screen in front of me--a Dallas school-teacher of 23 years was just shown being busted after following up with a "13 year-old" "boi" for a meeting after their online chat. He will be charged with solicitation of a minor, and as the cameras appeared, he lamely apologized, his head sinking into his shoulders and his body into the stool as a storm of electronics and attention bursts around him. Like the rest, down to his belly he went, hands behind head, to be cuffed and transported.

A scant few minutes or so is given at the end of the progam to cover what is perhaps the biggest story to come from Dateline's foray into Texas: the suicide of one of the perpretators. INXS00, better known as chief felony assistant Bill Conradt, was among those corresponding with the decoy boy. In an unusual move, perhaps owing to Conradt's profession, police sent a swat team ahead to his house rather than awaiting his appearance at the decoy house. Cameras, as ever, accompanied the guns. Not even the report of the weapon from inside the house was allowed into the broadcast. Viewers wanting a bloody climax were disappointed. Dateline will continue to report on developments, and on their activities in Murphy.

Though the report sanitized the event as far as it could, my mother predicted a more graphic outcome, and left the room. I daresay that her reaction was outside the norm. I suspect that many more, perhaps most viewers, wanted some blood spatter, or to see the corpse in a bag, or even just a chalk outline and stained carpeting. That vengeful desire feeds the popularity of the series--it is of a piece with our on-again, off-again (though never quite absent) national relationship with the death penalty, and our just-below-the-surface rationalization for the current bloodletting our tax dollars permit at home and abroad.

An instructive episode to consider in this context is that of the hapless Jonathan Edington. Though the final facts of the matter have not been reported by police in New Haven, Connecticut, it appears that Edington stabbed his neighbor neighbor to death based on the mistaken notion that the neighbor had molested his two-year old daughter. When I first saw the story reported here in Orlando on the day it occurred, the anchor on the local news suggested that, should the charge of molestation be substantiated, a light sentence for the fast-acting father would likely result.

While any of the men on "To Catch a Predator" would likely choose national humilation and local prosecution to the fate of the New Haven man, I am not sure that either outcome is ideal for us as onlookers, as citizens. Consider Edington again: had the molestation been confirmed as a certainty, many of us would say that we understood, and to an extent, approved and applauded his reaction. Perhaps most of us would do the same, we tell ourselves. An ethicist might produce a more nuanced position, but I think our approval makes us, just a little, complicit in the killing. At the very least, an attaboy attitude makes of us people for whom murder is, at least sometimes, an acceptable re/action. I can think of no belief system that allows for this sort of ad hoc justification of that which is wrong.

Where punishment is merited, it should result, but our ability to make sport of it, to live vicariously in vengeance, whether with a camera or a weapon, speaks ill of us. In one sense, "To Catch a Predator" may achieve some redemption in that its activities help to remove men of bad intent from our midst, at least for a time, thereby curtailing their illicit activities. That we are safer must also inform the popularity of the progam--and truly, as each man is lead away in handcuffs, one or more kids is indeed less likely to cross his path, whether virtually or actually.

Our satisfaction in this safety is, unfortunately, delusional, or at least wildly inflated. The tendency to consider only that which confirms our views, while ignoring or minimizing disconfirming evidence, should give us pause about the fate of sexual predators in this nation. Too, like NBC, we are likely to pursue most vigorously that which is most easily obtained--to pick the fruit that hangs lowest and within easy reach. Looking at the seemingly endless series of men arriving to meet young girls, often almost tripping over one another, its easy to believe that a sizable chunk of all predators has been rounded up.

This conclusion is wildly incorrect. According to Bureau of Justice statisitics from a three state study, 96% of reported rape survivors under age 12 know their attackers. Similar results from the Department of Justice provide confirming evidence with 95 to 97% or victims knowing their attackers, depending on the age of the victim. Considering the stigma and potential for family disruption and strife, it is easy to imagine thousands of cases not even having been included in these numbers due to failure to report. Look again to the feedback from the Dateline's viewers--for those that mention personal experience as victims, it seems clear that the abuse was both long-term and in the family.

Even if an adjustment is made for the emergence of the internet and its influence in fostering unsupervised, unhealthy connections between individuals, say to 10% of all attacks by strangers, neither we nor Dateline are even starting to address the problem. Without even talking honestly about it, we're a long way from a solution. Sure, we get a thrill and the men are rightfully prosecuted. But for every man caught, there seem to be four others to take his place, and more arriving every moment.

Many of the men on Dateline acknowledge having seen the show or heard of it. None was deterred. Clearly, we'll never know how many men won't ever show up at the house or in the chat room for fear of prosecution, but none of the men arrives on camera expecting anything other than the activities he's discussed with the Perverted Justice decoy. Criminals don't walk willingly into prison, and the threat of punishment will never deter the determind perpetrator.

So beyond the achievement of removing some men from the streets and chat-rooms, let me suggest something to Chris Hanson and his producers at Dateline: You have a bully pulpit--Use it! The program needs to be about more than satisfying our impotent need for revenge, and for more than making us feel satisifed that this awful problem is already being handled. Perhaps we can forego just a few lines of the salacious chat room dialogue to help raise awareness as to the actual scope of the problem that, in theory, the program is helping to address. I don't begrudge NBC the right to make money, but when they began this crusade, they took on a role that was more than just commercial. Let them embrace that additional role fully, or abandon the crusade altogether.