Controversially Funny

Let's start with something funny. This was posted in the Daily Dish at www.sfgate.com today:

Manson Woos Von Teese with Cupcakes
Shock rocker Marilyn Manson surprised his new wife, Dita Von Teese, on Valentine's Day by baking her a selection of cupcakes.

Burlesque dancer Von Teese insists the singer is nothing like his dark image suggests, and that he often likes to woo her with romantic treats.

Von Teese, who wed Manson in December, says, "He really is a cutie. For Valentine's Day we baked each other cupcakes with baby blue icing."

And then a reader left a comment that said: "...made of real BABIES."

Hahahahaha. That made me laugh.

Now here is my big controversial subject: Men who want to have sex with underage kids. I feel grossed out just typing that and I, in no way, condone this, however, I was watching Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" show last night.

So, what they do is, a member of Perverted Justice poses as a 12 or 13 year old boy or girl in chat rooms and they wait until a man starts chatting with them in a sexually charged way. The PJ peep doesn't make any first contact or provoke the conversation. They just wait. Inevitably, the sex talk happens and the PJ peep will then say, hey my parents are out of town this weekend do you want to come over.

Amazingly, 50 out of 51 men who made contact with this supposed 12 or 13 year old boy or girl online, showed up at the house. Men from all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.

Once inside the house, they were baited by that same PJ worker who can either pass for a 12 or 13 year old boy or girl. She would say, "hey I have to brush my teeth, hang out in the kitchen" and then men who only caught a brief glance of her (as boy or girl) obliged and waited. And then the Dateline guy comes out and confronts them!

Here is my issue. The Dateline guy was asking these questions like: what are you doing here? and you came to have sex with an underage child!?! You should know better and you should know that this is wrong.

I don't know if I can clearly express myself here, but I generally think that MOST of these men are mentally disabled in a way that makes them attracted to young kids. That they are somehow emotionally arrested at their own pre-teen mental level and that is what attracts them to kids, because in their brain they never sexually advanced to adult level. They identify sexually with that age group. Weird, to think of it that way. They know that it's wrong. They know that they shouldn't be there.

I don't really have compassion for these men, but I do think that to be humiliated on national television is not going to fix them or "shake" them of their issues. Although, the whole looking for underage kids in chatrooms kinda blows my argument. So I don't know what to say about that. I just feel that exposing these men on Dateline isn't really gonna help them, though I am not sure if that is the goal. To help them.

For the record, Perverted Justice invited the police and they arrested all 50 men who showed up.

My other thing is, I was kinda bummed out how Myspace was portrayed on Dateline, as a kind of free for all place for predators to utilize. I was also kinda irritated that these 12 and 13 year olds were CHATTING with these men. I mean, when I was 13 if some older guy made an appropriate ANYTHING to me I didn't stand for it. What are these kids thinking?