News-Record.com

Those salacious (and endless) NBC hidden-camera exposes of online child predators caught pursuing sexual liaisons with young girls and boys would be comical if they weren't so deeply disturbing.

In one case, a man strips naked while he awaits who he thinks is a teen-aged girl.

When confronted a camera crew, the man sheepishly admits the error of his ways as the lecturing reporter mercifully hands him a towel to cover himself.

What's even more amazing by the obviously popular "Dateline" series is the types of men snared in the stings: school teachers, coaches, a parent who dares bring his toddler along -- and even a rabbi.

Even more unsettling is that none of these scenes were set in the Triad. But they could have been.

Joe Killian's article notes the Greensboro Police Department's efforts to catch online predators usually similar tactics.

Here's part of Joe's Q&A with Cpl. C.E. Williams of the Greensboro police's juvenile services division:

Q: "So you don't have to look far for someone who's looking to solicit you if they think you're an underage girl?"

A: "No, not at all. When chatting online I would say I get an average of two solicitations every hour. That's not just guys who are saying 'hi.' That's solicitations for sex."

In a series of bloody sci-fi movies, an alien creature called a Predator hunts and kills for pleasure. He is cold, calculating and mercilessly efficient.

Yet the human variety that lurks on the Internet is three times as chilling. Because he's real.

As for NBC, when is enough enough?

The network seems to be getting so much mileage out of the exposes that one wonders if they might make it a miniseries.

Over and over they show one man after another snared by his own sickness and foolishness, some even after seeing earlier installments of the "Dateline" series.

But when does raising awareness cross the line into exploitation -- into using these predator traps as cheap entertainment?

I wonder if they haven't already.