Victim's alert...

victim's alert! (Best understood if you imagine Gomer Pyle hollering "Citizen's arrest! Citizen's arrest!")

Last night, sharing the red couch with husband, we were trying to catch the news on the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Because we do not have cable, we are dependent on network news' special reports or waiting till 11:00 p.m. In the interim, we decided to watch Dateline NBC.

Dateline takes investigative reporting, of the confrontational stance, to a whole new level these days for the primetime news shows. In some ways, this confrontation genre is reminiscent to me of watching 60 Minutes newsman Morley Safer back in the 80's. Morley would literally chase a scamming CEO down the street, getting doors slammed in his face, the cameraman getting pushed around, and all the while he's asking, "Can you explain to the American public exactly how you acquired the 42 million dollars?"

Chris Hanson of Dateline is the new Morley Safer. However, news shows are so much more subtle and technological these days with the whole secret video camera investigations. Not to mention the whole elaborate set up that occurs to catch the predator, to catch the criminal, to catch the victim. Whoa, the victim?

Not so much.

The premise of last night's show was to consider the staggering amount of thefts of America's latest techno toy, the Apple iPod. According to Apple, they receive one call every 5-6 minutes reporting the theft of an iPod. Dateline was testing the theory as to whether an iPod once stolen could be tracked. Investigation uncovered the truth that if a new iPod was stolen and then registered, it could be tracked.

So that's what they did. All over the West coast, Dateline agents placed iPods conspicuously inside of shopping bags, purses, tote bags and even on car dashboards. Then the secret video cameras turned on and the thievery began, I mean, victimization.

You see, the bags were placed as though the bag's owner had inadvertently left the bag behind, what you and I would call "forgot it." Within minutes, someone would come by, glance at the bag with no owner, and then repeatedly would take the bag and saunter off. (Although the more appropriate word is actually skulk or creep away.)

Some time later, using even more techno gadgetry the Dateline squad successfully tracked down the found/stolen iPods. Chris Hanson and crew rented a 32 ft RV to travel to the "victim's" homes, offering a $25 iTunes card for the "owners" of the newly registered iPods.

Okay, this is where the show became realicomtragedramaction as Chris Hanson asked these people a series of questions related to how they "acquired" their new iPod. Of course, after some of them had dug very deep acquisition story holes, Chris directs their attention to THE VIDEO OF THEM STEALING THE iPOD!

I know this post is three days long, but hang in there because I'm not even to the victim part yet.

So after watching themselves on VIDEO STEALING THE iPOD, these people answer with astute statements like:
"Well, someone did it to me. It's a cruel world so everyone does it to everybody." (Relevance logic.)
"I know what I did was wrong." (Truth claim?)
"You can equate it to walking down the street and finding a $100 bill on the floor." (Balderdash! A $100 bill on the ground is NOT the same as an iPod INSIDE of someone's purse, at the mall!)

But what honestly threw me off of the couch, and the whole reason I'm writing this post, was the comment made by the parents of one of the teenager's caught on video "acquiring" the iPod. The dad said that Dateline was unfairly tempting young kids to take iPods. (A whole other post could be written on how one fairly tempts young kids to take steal.)

Really? Tempting them to steal, to commit theft, unfairly even? As though he didn't know the iPod wasn't his, or didn't belong to him, or had just magically appeared on the table in the mall food court, but still without his name on it? On the video, there was no one holding a gun to this teen's head. There was no one threatening him with bodily harm if he didn't take it. Clearly, HE TOOK IT BECAUSE HE CHOSE TO TAKE IT. When full realization hits him that he has been caught STEALING an iPod, he even magnanimously gives advice, "If you find a stolen iPod, just give it back to lost and found."

What he didn't know was that he was being watched, that he could be tracked, and he would eventually be caught. Would that have staved off the temptation? Would that knowledge have kept him from becoming a victim of Dateline's temptation?

Sadly yes, it seems for most of the people interviewed only that knowledge alone would have bolstered their resistance to "unfair" temptation (I can't even write those two words together without gacking--when is temptation fair? what's fair? oy! my head explodes with things like this!)

Now lest anyone think that the whole point is to pick on this young guy--everyone makes mistakes, yada, yada. Some redeeming things that did come out in the story were one girl returned the iPod. Not everybody took the iPod in the first place. Some of the people interviewed by Chris Hanson were actually the 2nd or 3rd owners of the iPods having purchased them unknowingly as stolen property. And most everyone caught iPod-handed, whether for the show or not, acknowledged their error and stated they wouldn't be repeating the event.

Still, the entire show was an uncomfortable but truthful depiction of just what type of victims we are. Victim's alert! Victim's alert! Yes, we're victims all right, of our own fallen choices and sinful desires.


(All statement quotes were taken from the actual Dateline NBC transcript of the show. Please follow the links to see Chris Hanson's investigative report.)