After reading Charlie Brooker’s description of this bizarre slice of mainstream American television, I had to tune in. And after 20 minutes of tuning in, I had to tune out. This is the lowest piece of disturbing muck I think I’ve ever seen transmitted. Take your Big Brother gangster threats and race wars, take the inoffensive Heinz advert and shove those teacup-storms where the sun don’t shine – for ‘To Catch A Predator’ is the television show we should really be complaining about.
Brooker outlines the premise above, but to recap, it goes as follows:
- A fake 13 year old girl profile is set up by a group called Perverted Justice – a sensitively named pressure group who want to crush paedophiles.
- Weirdos respond to the profile.
- These frankly pathetic men indulge in sex talk with the fake individual who tells them her house is free of adults for the weekend.
- The ‘predator’ turns up at house and is lured in by a ‘petite 18 year old’ who is all sweetness and light.
- The minute the door is closed, Chris Hansen (who looks like the child-rapist in Happiness, by the way) assaults them with a barrage of their own sex talk from print outs of their online conversations.
- They try to escape and walk straight into the gun-sights of real American law enforcers.
- Unbelievably, we then see our new friends interviewed at the cop shop.
- Even more incredibly, we then see them up in front of a judge being sentenced to hard labour.
- We then move on to the next wannabe kiddy-diddler.
In the section I saw, Dallasbadboy2002 (oh how they revel in mocking their internet pseudonyms) – a father of two – was busted and a cock-ring found in his car – along with the standard discovery of rubber johnnys and lube.
Next up was Itnew2me – a 52 year old who went from claiming he was just going to sit and wait till the girl’s Mommy arrived home to be sure she was safe, to saying he was working for Jesus before settling on the fact that he may have a bit of a mental problem. Watching Itnew2me pour himself an icy cola as he went from one rationalisation to another was deeply unconfortable viewing.
Before I switched off I caught Rockandrollrule0281 who admitted in his online banter that he’d seen the show before. He still turned up, thinking it was an asian girl he was talking to, presumably assuming that in previous shows a caucasian girl had been used as the decoy. When he got inside he realised the girl wasn’t the asian he’d been promised and was busted immediately. His expression fell from worry to a kind of deep depression and realisation in a second. It was as though his impulse had been stemmed and he hadn’t a clue where he’d just been.
To be honest, if you weren’t aware of how he’d got hiomself in that situation then you might have felt a smidgen of sympathy for him. But then you recall that he had just married, only three weeks previously, and was in this situation as he was hoping to bone a child. It was hard to know what to make of him. Mr. Hyde was definitely superceding Dr. Jekyll that day, on a massive scale.
What got me about the whole exercise wasn’t so much the aspect of entrapment – American law is not something we can do much about, as viewers. I also felt numb to the ‘predators’. We’ve seen these kinds of people before and despite the fact they’re dangerous, sneaky, idiots who live their double lives in complete denial, there isn’t too much depth to them. They’re cowards, to put it simply.
The truly worrying facet of this stinking crapshow isn’t the legal point of view or the subject matter. It’s the glee ringmaster Chris Hansen appears to take in snaring the ‘predators’. He bathes in the glory of his position, using the enormous flaws in the twats he questions to get himself off.
It seems we’ve arrived at a point where we’re are so numb to the idea of children being abused that we’re prepared to allow the exploitation of the very notion of paedophilia to go on. Is it possible that by making mainstream shows which are so superficial in any exploration of the condition and are so over the top in every way that we’re making the crime in some way more acceptable? The more it’s discussed by morons on the TV and in the newspapers, the longer the issue is in the hands of idiots rather than experts. Most importantly, capturing sex criminals by any method simply isn’t the job of TV producers. The fact that the police collude with the TV network to make TCAP is beyond belief.
Anyone who watches this show and punches the air everytime a paedophile gets captured is a fucking idiot – and the show itself is pretty much as deplorable as the people it sets out to counter.
Truly depressing stuff.
Tags: apocalypse, Chris Hansen, Dateline NBC, Entertainment, FX, NBC, paedophilia, Television, the world is falling apart, To Catch A Predator, TV, Uncategorized
Watch With Mothers 
June 26, 2008 at 9:09 am
It’s got a very voyeuristic streak to it, hasn’t it? I think I remember one where a predator made a half hearted to stab himself in the neck with a biro.
Anybody seen Dog The Bounty Hunter? It’s the same type of show as this, bad assed (and I only use the word as that’s probably how he describes himself) vigilante Christian biker named ‘Dog’ (not his birth name, I think) and a gang of retard hicks go around arresting minor dealers. Brilliant.
June 26, 2008 at 9:14 am
I’ve heard of that, I might have to download it.
How come TV do law in America? The closest we get is MacIntyre’s Big Sting and that flopped, thank fuck.
June 26, 2008 at 9:35 am
I’d have thought they wouldn’t be able to show the “predators” face on the TV, or is there no such protection of your identity in the States?
Sounds like a truly awful programme, the kind you watch while trying to pick your jaw off the floor.
June 26, 2008 at 9:41 am
I’m not sure there’s protection for that over here, actually. Think of Chris Langham – we all knew the accusations long before it went to court.
That’s not really my issue with it… it’s the fact it’s not just reported – the crime is actually stimulated. Goaded. Nasty.
June 26, 2008 at 9:54 am
Oh no, I was just surprised that they could show them so openly – especially when (as you’ve said) they’ve openly “created” the crime, if you like. It just beggars belief, and surely it only encourages the wrong kind of attitude in people anyway? I’m not saying “Whoo paedos!” or anything like that, but a modicum of understanding as opposed to public lynchings would be nice.
When did my picture become a shape with a face?! How bizarre. I want to say it’s a hexagon, but maths never was my strong suit.
June 26, 2008 at 9:57 am
There’s many differences between English and American cop shows that make it more acceptable for these kind of things to be shown over there.
I think the biggest difference is that over here these kind of shows are shot as fly on the wall docu-soaps, even right down the scale of ‘Worlds Wildest Police Chases’ over here, but in America they show programmes like cops as a re-enactment of the good/evil narrative, cops in ‘Cops!’ aren’t ever shown to be anything but hard, intelligent, moral men who you don’t mess with, while our ones show police as normal average people with a tough job.
We’re just observers, the fly on the wall.
June 26, 2008 at 10:40 am
The best cops are the ones on Road Wars, especially the American clips.
“He’s getting away!”
*copper shoots suspect*
“Job done”
*continues munching doughnut*
Brilliant.
June 26, 2008 at 12:03 pm
“I think the biggest difference is that over here these kind of shows are shot as fly on the wall docu-soaps, even right down the scale of ‘Worlds Wildest Police Chases’ over here, but in America they show programmes like cops as a re-enactment of the good/evil narrative, cops in ‘Cops!’ aren’t ever shown to be anything but hard, intelligent, moral men who you don’t mess with, while our ones show police as normal average people with a tough job.
We’re just observers, the fly on the wall.”
Yeah, but do you notice the way the clips are cut very short immediately ater the capture of the criminal? It’s one thing to show them shooting at them when they’re trying to escape, but another to show them beating the captured crim into a bloody pulp a la Rodney King.
June 26, 2008 at 12:04 pm
P.S Did anyone see ‘Tribal Wives’ last night?
June 26, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I’ve got that recorded to watch but the trouble with V+ is I’ve now got about 16 hours of shit backed up to watch.
June 26, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I cried.
June 26, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Because you’re a girl, most likely.
June 26, 2008 at 12:26 pm
No – I never cry at stuff usually, but it was really sad! She seemed to have deep (and completely reciprocal) feelings for the tribe and Ewingento (?), her husband, who seemed genuinely bewildered when she left.
It just felt wrong to watch. Car crash telly, where you could see the crash coming for miles, in slow motion. A bit like on Casualty. TV shouldn’t mess with people’s feeling like that.
June 26, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Dog The Bounty Hunter used to be ace. He ran around with his enormous-breasted wife, and various members of his family catching bail jumpers who were fucked up on ‘the ice’. Then Dog was recorded on the phone having a tirade against ‘the fucking niggers’, and a lot of people turned it off.
June 26, 2008 at 12:55 pm
You got to turn to Jesus, brar.
June 26, 2008 at 1:29 pm
*looks up Dog The Bounty Hunter on illegal websites*
Quiet round here, like.
June 26, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Excuse me for being a pedant here, but what are the paedo’s charged with when they get duely hauled down the cop shop? They may have thought that they were gonna fuck a wee nipper, but they didn’t – and the person they engaged in dirty talk with was a consenting adult, even if they didn’t know it at the time.
Therefore what crimes have actually been commited?
On a side note, Tribal Wives – didn’t see last nights, but I watched the one before and it was a laughably stupid programme; a liberal reactionist becomes convinced that chanting in mud huts and drinking tea to warn off evil spirits was the answer to her deeply psychological problems, and in the process pretty much reveals that she is as niave, ignorant and patronising as the programme makers for thinking there’s anymore wisdom in barefooted luddites than there is in the vacuous, empty headed consumerism she worshipped before.
Maybe last nights was really good, but the one the week before was so pathetic that it made me wish than when they find these long-lost and remote tribes they’d just have the decency to leave them alone, instead of shoving cameras in their faces, littering their land with Coke bottles and clawing at them for a new mystical interpretation of life to embrace for 5 minutes before fucking off back to their £250,000 London crash pad so they can write an amusing G2 article and tell all their friends about how “like, totally wise the tribes are.”
June 26, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Medlo – in most American states I’m led to believe that it’s not entrapment if the phoney profile is approached by the potential diddler rather than vice versa.
Their entrapment laws are very different to ours.
The moment any minor (real or otherwise) is approached with clear intentions pertaining to sexual coercion, then a felony has been committed. That’s American law for you.
June 26, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Hmmm. I’ve tried many times over to write how I feel about that, but I can’t make it coherant enough to not make it sound like I’m either a) a redneck justice supporter or b) pansy freedom apologist so I shall leave it there. Very worrying though… there’s alot of fantasists out there who pose no danger to people, and if approachment is enough to guarantee arrest you really have to wonder just how ‘free’ that country really is…
June 26, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I have mixed feelings on it myself, so that’s why I focused more on the easier target of the way the show’s presented. Like it’s a force for Jesus rather than an exploitative mire of wrong.
June 26, 2008 at 1:52 pm
It’s hard to think of an analogy for TCAP…
If they put a sign on Chris Hansen’s arse saying ‘kick me’ I’d probably kick him.
Plenty of Dateline NBC crap here:
http://insidedateline.msnbc.msn.com/archive/category/1035.aspx
June 26, 2008 at 1:55 pm
It’s a despicable piece of ‘entertainment’ for sure, and it’s probably quite wise to focus on that rather than the dubious moral questions raised by it.
One thing is for sure, when future historians look back on this point in time and judge our society by what we watched on TV they’ll come to the conclusion that we were nothing more than moralistic savages…
I’m glad you wrote about this despite Brooker dealing with it elsewhere, I wanted to do something on ‘Living Lohan’ but opted out because Jonathon Bernstein had already written about it in this weeks guide – I might give it a crack now, though.
June 26, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Can’t see a problem with that – there’s only so much TV after all. The Apprentice totally saturated every blog / review going. So go for it mate.
As for future historians, they’ll all be using waterproof pens I presume, as the rains are going to come soon. And 50% of the population will be obese paedophiles. And we’ll all be poor as after the credit crunch will come the credit snap. And smokers will be forced to smoke on the moon.
June 26, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Smoking on the moon sounds fun… more in inhale and longer to exhale… brilliant!
June 26, 2008 at 2:05 pm
More interesting stuff here, btw… apparently the people of Murphy, texas were outraged that paedophiles (or potential child abusers) were all lured to one house in their town. To be fair, I wouldn’t really want NBC doing this shit next door to my hovel.
http://abev.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/to-catch-a-predator-right-next-door/
June 27, 2008 at 9:15 am
“Maybe last nights was really good, but the one the week before was so pathetic that it made me wish than when they find these long-lost and remote tribes they’d just have the decency to leave them alone, instead of shoving cameras in their faces, littering their land with Coke bottles and clawing at them for a new mystical interpretation of life to embrace for 5 minutes before fucking off back to their £250,000 London crash pad so they can write an amusing G2 article and tell all their friends about how “like, totally wise the tribes are.””
I haven’t watched any others so couldn’t comment on how shit the series is. However, the one shown on Wednesday was interesting. As I said, both Carol and the tribe appeared to have genuine regard for each other, and not in a patronising ‘oh aren’t they sweet/wise/noble’ kind of way. Carol and Ewingento really fancied each other, it was obvious to everyone, so much so the village elders decided they should be married. The camera crew and the translator knew full well what was afoot, but instead of warning Carol they let her prepare for her own wedding, unbeknownst to her. And that’s when things got awkward, without her fully knowing what was happening the wedding went ahead. When she finally realised, she went along with it in surprisingly good spirits. But the next morning she seemed to wake up to the fact that she had two children at home and that several million people were watching this on BBC2. Of course when her time came to leave there were tears all round, and nobody seemed more hurt than her ‘husband’ Ewingento, who had lost his previous wife to the western world 10 years earlier. It felt completely wrong eavesdropping on his desperate pleas for her to stay; but it was the wistful look in his eyes that made me cry and shall haunt me for a good long while.
As you say Medlo “it made me wish than when they find these long-lost and remote tribes they’d just have the decency to leave them alone, instead of shoving cameras in their faces”, but playing cupid was one step further across the line of decency.
February 1, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Most of the comments here seem to be made by people who dont trust cops in general or people who completely dont understand that 300 potential sex predators have been caught.
You people dismiss the fact that all they do is set up yahoo accounts with young girls/boys names and pics on them and wait until they are contacted and the predator begins to talk dirty before they real them in (remember there are chat logs they must produce to the courts).
this type of sting operation is the most effective possible way to capture IN THE HISTORY OF CHILD MOLESTATION STING OPERATIONS.and you morons are too busy talking about anything else!
The information age allow predators more efficient access to kids.its anonymity is utilized by child molestors worldwide. but it also affords police departments the same thing. can you name another sting opp oration that has netted 300 potentials in 30 days of work.
you people are the ones that make me sick because you cant get past your own pettiness to understand the facts
February 1, 2009 at 9:37 pm
@randy
Uhhh – yeah, all valid points on a legal /crime level, but you’ve missed the point. Someone made entertainment out of it.
A TV show.
On the same level as ‘Animals do the funniest things’
That is the point.
July 17, 2021 at 7:36 am
dr kola kolawole of hamilton, male psychiatrist had been convicted of second degree felony forcible sexual abuse and third degree felony forcible sodomy molestation of three juvenile patients at the ontario facility where he worked and sexual assault of a highschool girl in a park.