Please tell me this is satire...
What’s on TV Tonight? Humiliation to the Point of Suicide - New York Times
In November 2006, a camera crew from “Dateline NBC” and a police SWAT team descended on the Texas home of Louis William Conradt Jr., a 56-year-old assistant district attorney. The series’ “To Catch a Predator” team had allegedly caught Mr. Conradt making online advances to a decoy who pretended to be a 13-year-old boy. When the police and TV crew stormed Mr. Conradt’s home, he took out a handgun and shot himself to death.
“That’ll make good TV,” one of the police officers on the scene reportedly told an NBC producer. Deeply cynical, perhaps, but prescient. “Dateline” aired a segment based on the grim encounter. After telling the ghoulish tale, it ended with Mr. Conradt’s sister decrying the “reckless actions of a self-appointed group acting as judge, jury and executioner, that was encouraged by an out-of-control reality show.”
Mr. Conradt’s sister sued NBC for more than $100 million. Last month, Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in New York ruled that her suit could go forward...
No, I suppose it's real. I honestly didn't realize that American television had fallen this far. I live in a different world.
I'm sure NBC is now begging to settle, but I hope Mr. Contradt's family nails them publicly. I've vote for a $30 billion dollar fine myself ...
Your point is well taken and there is a second issue. The more recent rapid development of the Swat Team approach to crime has taken on the look of a future predicted by Orwell and others.
ReplyDeleteEven the smallest municipalities have a ready to go swat team that will, at the blink of an eyen, break down doors and hurl smoke and flash bombs through windows.
I was reflecting upon the series myself just the other evening and wondering why in every instance, those who had visited the dateline sting, would be wrestled to the ground despite the fact that the swat team could not possibly be resisted!
It appears that brute force has become the norm.
Alan