Last night I saw a little bit of Greatest Educator of Them All Debra Lafave's Dateline interview. Of course I recorded the whole thing and, as I am both extremely well-versed in the details of the case and the ethical soul of America, I will comment in depth later. Today however, I will tantalize you with my initial reaction to the interview.

Now you're all well aware that I'm on record as questioning the criminality of Lafave's act, and in that I'm joined by every honest, straight man who's been 14. Clearly the only victim in this crime is Lafave's cuckolded husband. And while I can think of few things more embarrassing than to have one's wife bang the paperboy, even we as a crumbling society do not yet jail people for causing embarrassment.

And yet in practical terms, what Lafave did is a crime. She pled guilty to lewd lascivious behavior and was required to register as a sex offender. And the producers of Dateline, a program best-known for setting up "stings" in which men who contact what they think to be underaged girls on the internet presumably to commit some lewd and lascivious behavior, are lured to a house, are confronted on camera, and are then arrested, saw it fit to give Lafave an hour-long sit down with Matt Lauer in order to explain herself. She was lighted wonderfully, was tossed softball after softball by the king of softballs himself, and was generally treated with kid gloves. The history of her bipolar disorder, that which she claims caused her to suck off her student, was explained in sympathetic detail, as was her own rape, to which she also assigns some blame for her actions.

Whether I agree with it or not, Lafave was convicted. That's something Dateline cannot claim about any of the men that is filmed, chided, abused, insulted, or embarrassed in the "To Catch a Predator" series. The producers, who seem so sensitive to Lafave's mental illness, choose to air footage of stings involving a number of very obviously mentally ill men, including one segment I saw of a man so pathetically confused and sick he munches on a cookie throughout his evisceration.

For me, this isn't about the gender double standard. We all know that men fucking underaged girls is rape (unless you're Jimmy Page) and women fucking underaged boys is a delightful curiosity. That's a reality of our society. What bothers me is the eagerness with which we embrace a media lynch mob, and the obliviousness we have to the hypocrisy of it.

But on the other hand, how could you hate this face.

Analogcabin @ 11:05 AM
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