Over the past few years I have noticed those individuals who haunt high profile murder cases and lead a semi-permanent existence there. Day after day the same faces appear on the 10 o’clock news. Most must be on welfare since no one else could miss that much work and still keep a job. Some of these folks carry signs, most are shouting. None of their shouts are about fair play or justice; no, all scream for vengeance. All want blood, NOW!
To this humble observer, I have found that the mobs screaming for blood outside courtrooms to be even more revolting than the murderer on trial inside. In my opinion, the drunken ghouls holding up signs, “Burn Ted, Burn!” outside the prison where Ted Bundy was executed were pretty damn scary all by their lonesomes; so-called humans hardly better than the serial killer whose death they were celebrating so rapturously. Indeed, the only difference between the mob and the murderer may have been that the mob lacked the intelligence and daring of Bundy to commit such crimes for no one could doubt that the mob’s thirst for blood was fully as gluttonous as Bundy’s.
Recently, those outside of the Casey Anthony trial here in Florida reminded me of those medieval mobs who grinned and rubbed their hands together while savoring the spectacle of an accused witch being roasted over hot coals. The faces on modern TV were, I noticed, the same as those in Middle Ages woodcuts, only the centuries have changed. True, some of these pathetic people were merely hoping to get their mugs on the news for five seconds or so (what satisfaction anyone can gain from that I have not a clue).
Anyway, the blood-thirsty mobs around courthouses have become as much an American fixture as the shopping mobs outside Walmarts waiting for the doors to open following Thanksgiving.
Admittedly, To Catch a Predator was one of my favorite programs. I know them all by heart. Each month the sting operation would set up in a different state and there they would lure internet predators into a home with the promise of meeting an underage boy or girl for sex. Some of these “predators” were little more than kids themselves and clearly the law should bend a bit in those cases. But the rest, in their thirties and up . . . My God! Some of these lecherous wretches should be locked up forever!
The host of To Catch a Predator was one Chris Hansen (below). Chris is a tall, smart, witty media type who clearly enjoyed his work. Hansen took devilish delight in surprising these sexual predators soon after they entered the house; he loved tormenting these perverts caught in his web by reading their internet chat transcripts. He was very, very good at dragging the torture on and on.
“Do you want to explain yourself? You come in here, John, with a six-pack of beer, with condoms and a bottle of lubricant, in a home where you were expecting to meet a 12-year-old girl home alone, you come in here with all that, and here you sit in a strange home butt naked! What can you possibly say for yourself, John?”
"John,” of course, sitting stunned and stupid, can say nothing for his naked self and as the cameras roll, the sadistic grilling continues. This scenario was played out dozens of times per program and Lord, but how we did love it. I mean, these loathsome characters deserved what they were getting, and more. But really, after a while I could not help but notice how much Hansen was enjoying himself; how much he savored the moment. "Maybe Chris is enjoying this just a little too much," I thought to myself. After a few months of this sort of sadistic torment, I began to see that Hansen was perhaps little better than those he caught. Maybe not even as good. Maybe it takes a big rat to catch a little rat?
Anyway, I find it both poetic, as well as just, that the Grand Pious Inquisitor of Perverts himself now should face the same torture he put these people through. Chris apparently was filmed recently here in Florida having secret sex with a woman who was certainly not his wife or the mother of his two children. Do I doubt it? No. Am I shocked by it? No. Am I happy about it? No. But my God, what on earth was Hansen thinking?
“Hey Chris, you wanna explain yourself? What’s a grown man like you, a grown man with so much going for himself, what’s a man like you doing in a position like this? What do you have to say for yourself? And before you leave, Chris, please finish your cookie . . . and don’t let the hypocrisy hit you in the butt on your way out!”
