To Catch a Predator
So, Barry sent me MSNBC's news article on this gem of a story, i.e., the Lisa Nowak story. If you haven't heard about it (which I find hard to believe), she's an astronaut charged with attempting to kill another woman who posed a threat to her budding relationship with another astronaut.
This is the kind of story that TV movies are made of, and I just can't get over the awesomeness of the whole thing. (If my attitude on this matter offends you, you'll probably want to stop reading at this point because I'm about to take a much more offensive stance. Brace yourself.)
So, I mention that it was the MSNBC article because linked off of it was a video for NBC's latest installment of "To Catch a Predator," which, again, I'm sure you're familiar with, but if not, it's it's an ambush/investigative journalism report that seeks to out sexual "predators" by luring them to a house with the promise of teenage sex, only to record said predators for national television embarrassment/outing and promptly arrest them.
Now, I'm at least three months too late to be commenting on "To Catch a Predator" because this is at least the eighth version to come along. I had taken notice of the program before but never watched it until today, when I viewed several clips of it on YouTube.
And I guess I thought I'd enjoy it. I love voyeuristic shows (Hello, "Big Brother"!) and I'm certainly of the opinion that pedophiles=bad people, so a show that combines these along with a "Gotcha!" aspect and a big ol' happy ending should be a winner, right?
Well, actually, I found myself feeling bad for the predators. I think that part of the reason is that when I imagine the kind of man who would actively seek out sex with a child, I imagine an unattractive, greasy loner type. But what I got on TV was the guy next door. These were men with careers and, in at least one case, wives. They were putting a lot on the line to chase that fantasy of sex with a 13-year-old girl, and, in several cases, viewers can watch their realization that their entire lives have been ruined.
In one case, a newlywed who had recently completed a tour of Iraq was caught and he sat with police, close to tears, telling them that what he had done was wrong and everything he had worked for was gone. I mean, where's the happy ending in that?
You can argue that a man who will risk his family, his career, and his reputation for underage sex is perhaps a man with a more serious problem than the unattractive, greasy loner type. That this is the guy who really lacks self control and who needs to get help. But can't he get help in privacy? Isn't it embarrassing enough for his family?
Another problem that I had with the show was the decoy--the girl they used. She was 18 but perhaps looked younger. Still, I thought, she didn't look 13. They could put her hair in pigtails and dress her like an adolescent but she didn't look 13. And so when these men showed up thinking that they wanted to have sex with a 13-year-old but were actually confronted with an 18-year-old, they weren't deterred. I mean, if they were really interested in young girls, mightn't this have been offputting?
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that you can't trust that they would have done anything illegal unless they were actually met with an underage girl. It's hard to say what an average 13-year-old really looks like, but say that's right at the peak of puberty. So she's only starting to develop a womanly body and, for the most part, she still looks like a child. Now, had these men seen an honest-to-God child when they arrived at the set of their ambush, perhaps at least one of them would've said, "Whoa, you're a lot younger than I pictured. I can't go through with this." Unlikely, maybe, but plausible.
Because to say that their sexual attraction to the 18-year-old girl who they think is 13 is somehow criminal just isn't true. Imagine, for instance, that a man walking down the street eyes an 18-year-old woman but thinks she is only 12. He finds himself sexually attracted to her, talks to her, flirts with her, and ends up having sex with her--all while never asking how old she is. He just assumes she's 12. Does this make him a predator?
And, again, how do we characterize attraction to a 13-year-old, because that's an age at which some girls haven't hit puberty and look like children while others could pass for adults. And if what "To Catch a Predator" paraded in front of these men was an adult, perhaps their attraction isn't so perverse.
Then again, desiring sex with a 13-year-old doesn't have to have anything to do with body type. Some men might want the girl who looks fully developed while others want the child. It's not about their looks, is it? It's about someone who is young, inexperienced, and able to be controlled. It's about someone who is vulnerable, and if that is what they're preying on, I guess they are predators after all.
That said, I still felt bad for them and their newly ruined lives. But there was definitely a sense of schadenfreude about it, because, I have to admit, as grim as my life has seemed lately, it can't hold a candle to what these men have gone through and will go through. That's something of a happy ending, I suppose.
This is the kind of story that TV movies are made of, and I just can't get over the awesomeness of the whole thing. (If my attitude on this matter offends you, you'll probably want to stop reading at this point because I'm about to take a much more offensive stance. Brace yourself.)
So, I mention that it was the MSNBC article because linked off of it was a video for NBC's latest installment of "To Catch a Predator," which, again, I'm sure you're familiar with, but if not, it's it's an ambush/investigative journalism report that seeks to out sexual "predators" by luring them to a house with the promise of teenage sex, only to record said predators for national television embarrassment/outing and promptly arrest them.
Now, I'm at least three months too late to be commenting on "To Catch a Predator" because this is at least the eighth version to come along. I had taken notice of the program before but never watched it until today, when I viewed several clips of it on YouTube.
And I guess I thought I'd enjoy it. I love voyeuristic shows (Hello, "Big Brother"!) and I'm certainly of the opinion that pedophiles=bad people, so a show that combines these along with a "Gotcha!" aspect and a big ol' happy ending should be a winner, right?
Well, actually, I found myself feeling bad for the predators. I think that part of the reason is that when I imagine the kind of man who would actively seek out sex with a child, I imagine an unattractive, greasy loner type. But what I got on TV was the guy next door. These were men with careers and, in at least one case, wives. They were putting a lot on the line to chase that fantasy of sex with a 13-year-old girl, and, in several cases, viewers can watch their realization that their entire lives have been ruined.
In one case, a newlywed who had recently completed a tour of Iraq was caught and he sat with police, close to tears, telling them that what he had done was wrong and everything he had worked for was gone. I mean, where's the happy ending in that?
You can argue that a man who will risk his family, his career, and his reputation for underage sex is perhaps a man with a more serious problem than the unattractive, greasy loner type. That this is the guy who really lacks self control and who needs to get help. But can't he get help in privacy? Isn't it embarrassing enough for his family?
Another problem that I had with the show was the decoy--the girl they used. She was 18 but perhaps looked younger. Still, I thought, she didn't look 13. They could put her hair in pigtails and dress her like an adolescent but she didn't look 13. And so when these men showed up thinking that they wanted to have sex with a 13-year-old but were actually confronted with an 18-year-old, they weren't deterred. I mean, if they were really interested in young girls, mightn't this have been offputting?
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that you can't trust that they would have done anything illegal unless they were actually met with an underage girl. It's hard to say what an average 13-year-old really looks like, but say that's right at the peak of puberty. So she's only starting to develop a womanly body and, for the most part, she still looks like a child. Now, had these men seen an honest-to-God child when they arrived at the set of their ambush, perhaps at least one of them would've said, "Whoa, you're a lot younger than I pictured. I can't go through with this." Unlikely, maybe, but plausible.
Because to say that their sexual attraction to the 18-year-old girl who they think is 13 is somehow criminal just isn't true. Imagine, for instance, that a man walking down the street eyes an 18-year-old woman but thinks she is only 12. He finds himself sexually attracted to her, talks to her, flirts with her, and ends up having sex with her--all while never asking how old she is. He just assumes she's 12. Does this make him a predator?
And, again, how do we characterize attraction to a 13-year-old, because that's an age at which some girls haven't hit puberty and look like children while others could pass for adults. And if what "To Catch a Predator" paraded in front of these men was an adult, perhaps their attraction isn't so perverse.
Then again, desiring sex with a 13-year-old doesn't have to have anything to do with body type. Some men might want the girl who looks fully developed while others want the child. It's not about their looks, is it? It's about someone who is young, inexperienced, and able to be controlled. It's about someone who is vulnerable, and if that is what they're preying on, I guess they are predators after all.
That said, I still felt bad for them and their newly ruined lives. But there was definitely a sense of schadenfreude about it, because, I have to admit, as grim as my life has seemed lately, it can't hold a candle to what these men have gone through and will go through. That's something of a happy ending, I suppose.