I'm told there is a new documentary, "Predators," that takes a good look at Chris Hansen and the television program that made him famous, "To Catch a Predator" (2CaP). For those of you who don't remember: "To Catch a Predator" was part of the development of the moral panic about child predators that would in time lead us to QAnon. 2CaP was a spin-off of DATELINE. It Premiered in late 2004 and its run continued through 2007. The format was always the same. The key segments would take place in a sting home, which looked to the sting targets like an ordinary suburban house, although containing a critical hidden camera and lots of sound equipment. Typically, a man would show up at the front door of the home, in the belief that he had a 'date' with an underage girl. He had acquired that belief by way of internet communication with adults impersonating underage girls in chat rooms. The sting targets, then, would arrive at the home and a poli...
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In watching an episode of SOUTH PARK, years ago, we learned that the devil plans to give himself a big party. This was Season 10, episode 11, back in 2006. I won't bother you with a plot outline, I only want to focus on one point, what seemed at the time a silly bit of word play that now, in 2024, seems positively a prefigurement. What it prefigures I will let you decide. But the plot has Satan planning for himself a big Halloween party on Earth on the analogy of the Sweet Sixteen parties that rich Daddies among humans throw for their girls, and that were the subject of a reality television series at the time. Satan's is to take place in the fancy ballroom of a ritzy Los Angeles hotel. Some time before the actual party, Satan visits that ballroom with a party planner. The party planner says that "Diddy" had thrown himself a birthday party here recently. Also, when Satan offers an idea (something like, a big ice cream fountain in one corner of the room) , ...
There is a new anthology out, a collection of essays by philosophers addressing in their various ways the "Liar Paradox." I'll discuss the paradox myself today, and then say something about the new book in tomorrow's post. Most people, surely most people likely to be reading this blog, are familiar with most of the following material. I trust you will read on regardless. We begin, as is conventional, with the semi-legendary Cretan seer Epimenides, who is supposed to have said "all Cretans are liars." This is a rather fuzzy non-paradoxical comment, actually. Our tendency is simply to say that even liars don't generally lie all the time. A "liar" is someone who lies out of habit, pathological need, or to take advantage of other people. There is no logical inference that every sentence from the mouth of a "liar" in the ordinary language sense be a lie. So Epimenides may well have been telling the truth. Over the next couple o...
For no very compelling reason I'm thinking today of a particular episode of South Park. The episode I have in mind is one in which a Mormon family moves to the neighborhood. Its son (Gary) starts attending school with Kyle, Stan, etc. The central story line involves Stan and more broadly the Marsh family, the disruption of its habits by the new family in town, and eventually the resumption of normal by the Marsh's as Stan persuades his father that the Mormon story of how their church got its start is nonsensical. It is possible that the recent unexpected re-appearance of Mitt Romney in our national politics had something to do with turning my thoughts thus. But the story gives Gary the last word. Or, almost the last word. Actually, it's Cartman who gets the very last word. After Gary directs an angry monologue at Stan and walks away, Cartman says, "Man, that kid is cool, huh?" What Gary was saying was that Stan had rejected his friendship because Stan ...
especially where the would-be stinger is as full of himself in general as is James O'Keefe. For those who may have forgotten his name, O'Keefe acquired a certain degree of notoriety by stinging ACORN in 2009. He arranged and recorded meetings with ACORN staffers in which he represented himself as a pimp, and asked for their help. The (heavily edited) tapes that he later released did seem to indicate that some staffers were willing to assist him, suggesting he describe his presumed underage brothel as a "group home" etc. A fair summary of the complicated controversy that resulted is this: in at least one case, possibly in more, the heavy editing of the tapes amounted to defamation. But in some cases, ACORN staffs did make damning statements which are not mitigated by context. The matter inspired a South Park episode, which is always a good thing to contribute to the world. Anyway: O'Keefe has rather faded from the spotlight since then. There are so many ...
Now people seem to be working to figure out the difference between Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal. Caitlyn felt like a woman trapped in a man's body, and is now "out" as a woman, with the help of surgery, drugs, and a world-famous photographer. Rachel appears to have "felt" black, estranged from her Causasian family, and trapped in the body you see in this photo -- the carrot-haired and quite light-skinned woman in the center of the back row. Are the two cases similar or different in terms of what judgment (if any) rational observers can make about them? If they are different, is either of them to be judged to have done anything dishonest or even imprudent? Well, let me not weigh in on such matters. I argue about no one's identity except my own -- and not that either, if I can help it. I simply observe that the animated sitcom SOUTH PARK covered this ground long before it was news. The character Kyle Br...
Regular viewers of South Park will recognize the term "catatafish." It is a fishy ghost first found inside the stomach of a semi-regular character called Mr. Slave. Presumably the body of the fish got there as a result of Mr. Slave's devotion to S/M. As you can tell from this clip , the catatafish is a catfish, and also has a vaguely samarai-like outfit. It's the samarai connection that presumably inspired a play on words in the character's name.There is a bit more going on than the addition of a couple of unnecessary syllables to the word "catfish." One traditional samurai weapon is the katana, a slightly curved sword as portrayed above. As the link here indicates, the Catatafish appears to have a katana, in a bejeweled sheath, on his back. So I'm thinking catatafish is a portmanteau of katana and catfish. Sound right to everyone? Only sign onto this if it sounds right to you. I'm not here to make you do anything. Not like those s...
My recent reading includes SYBIL EXPOSED: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case (2011) by Debbie Nathan. The gist of the book is that psychotherapy is the disease it affects to cure. Here's a key passage, describing the condition of Shirley Mason, the real life analog to the woman we all think we know as 'Sybil,' as of 1958. "Almost four years had passed since Shirley first walked into Connie's office as an upbeat graduate student with nagging but bearable emotional problems. Now, after hundreds of hours of therapy and countless pills, shots, and machine-induced convulsions, she was a thirty-five-year-old junkie who spent most of her time in bed and who, when she did get up, checked her mail box for money from her father, or walked the streets muttering to herself." The Connie in question is Cornelia Wilbur, a psychiatrist whose training was steeped in a very strict Freudian orthodoxy, including a firm belief in ...
I'm thinking about the actor Morgan Freeman these days. It isn't that I've ever been a big fan,but he has crossed my radar lately in two ways that may be related. So let's talk about Freeman, in this post and in the next. Regular readers of my blogs know that I'm a devotee of the animated show South Park , the wisdom of which I have cited on issues like literary fraud and Ritalin. Anyway, the day after out recent presidential election South Park ran an episode called "Obama Wins!" Despite the simplicity of that title, the episode was a complicated one, involving stolen ballot boxes, a Chinese General, and Disney's recent purchase of the intellectual property of Star Wars . At a couple of points in the convoluted plot, an animated version of Morgan Freeman shows up to explain things to the regular characters in the series. Indeed, one of the regular characters comments on how Freeman does exactly this in his movie roles. Does he? Maybe s...