Here I Go Again

I know I already posted a pet peeve, but I guess today is just ripe for them!

So I am sitting on the couch letting T take a nap and we (okay, really just me) are channel surfing. I stop on Oprah, now let me preface this by saying that generally I am not an Oprah fan, but I usually check and see what her topic du jour is.

Today I see it is about Internet predators. Kind of skeezy, but an ever seemingly increasing problem. I decide to check it out...I didn't last long.

I can handle watching shows like Law & Order SVU, and other police/murder/dark tales type shows, but I turned the channel on this one pretty quickly. I will admit some of the things they mentioned were pretty hard to listen to, but it was not the reason I turned the channel.

The first reason I turned the channel was because of a "how to" book that has been written by predators on how to do these sorts of things. The fact the book exists is not why I turned the channel, but it was due to the fact that Ms Winfrey proceeded to read the entire brochure like document out loud, step-by-step (with the kindness of censoring for the at home audience, but the in home audience got the uncensored version).

The second reason I turned the channel was after I had gone back to the show to see what they had moved on to only to discover that Ms Winfrey was now talking to a man from Wyoming whose job was to find predators. Okay fine, however they then proceeded to share with the audience a video of which the at home audience was spared from viewing it due to the nature of it. BUT the man did describe what everyone was looking at...so you got to picture things for yourself.

These two reasons together form my third reason for being highly bothered by this show. I know the intention was to bring to bring to light the severity of Internet predators and just what is out there, but do we really need to see blurred out photos of infants and toddlers? I am guessing the audience did not see the blurred images.

I will preface my next thought with this - I did not watch the show in it's entirety, so perhaps I missed something that was done that would contradict my feelings, but I didn't get that impression from the parts of the show I did see. I am all for stopping Internet predators, but does such detail about how people commit these crimes have to be given? Ms Winfrey READ (word for word) a how-to guide on how to get started in child pornography...I mean really? Granted pedophiles know this, but do we have to make the details known on such a mainstream level?

These thoughts were echoed as I watched Primetime tonight discussing some thread of unsuccessful terrorist plots. They did say nothing they would be showing was new to terrorists, but what about those would-be terrorists, or the really curious kid who might be on the brink? Do we need to delve into how shoe bombs are made, or why I can't bring that bottle of pop through security anymore?

Please, inform people of the scary things that exist in this world so that we can be informed and aware and do our best to protect ourselves and the ones we love, but can we limit the amount of information shared so that not everyone and their dog knows how to hide their computer stash of child porn or how to convince your 3 year old that it's okay to do those things? I think we'd all be a little better off without knowing.