Chris Hanson. To Catch a Predator

I like to watch Chris Hanson catch predators. You might have seen this TV program, which I, for some unknown but perverted reason, find extremely interesting. What is it in our wiring that permits human beings to enjoy watching the agony of others? This program called To Catch a Predator --- is no more than a modern version of the suffering Romans watched in the Coliseum.

This is the way it works. There are men out there --- I don’t know why they never seem to catch any women, but you can credit me when they come up with a show that does --- there are men out there who go on line and enter what are called children’s chat rooms and exchange emails with children. There are adult decoys in these chat rooms who have mastered the chat room language of the 13-year-old, who tell these men that they are 13, they are home alone, and these adults, posing as children, then make arrangements for the naughty old men to visit them.

I do not condone what these men are doing, but anyone who can read knows that it is easier to pass a law than it is to extirpate the neurological and glandular facets that were hard wired into our circuit boards millions of years ago. Ten thousand years ago our ancestors died of old age when they were 30 --- if they were lucky. Only a few hundred years ago, and perhaps even today in some deeply wooded areas of our great country, unmarried 14 year old girls were considered spinsters. But nowadays there is a law which establishes 18 as the age of consent, even though some people might be more prepared for combat or marriage at 15 than others are at 40.

So when a man types naughty explicit things to a person he thinks is under 18 and then shows up hoping to follow through with promises his wife knows he couldn’t keep at home, he has broken the law, he is arrested on camera, and program ratings soar. One might justify this type of TV programming because it notifies the 750,000 men who are trolling for children on line every day, that one out of every 25,000 of them is going to go to jail after being featured on national television. Predators probably have a better chance of being struck by lightning.

The topic is deep and has many unexplored ramifications, so what do we learn from all this? In listening to these pitiful men being interviewed on camera, one gets the impression that their compulsion might approximate that of a self-destructive gambler. They know that what they are doing is going to destroy them but they can’t stop until they’ve spent all they can borrow or until they are caught drinking beer in some teeny bopper’s Jacuzzi and are sent to jail.

We are told that lusting after young boys and girls is a mental illness, so goody, goody --- down come the walls of political correctness --- here is finally one form of mental illness that we may root out and ridicule on national television. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com and if you are over 18 years of age, I’d like to hear from you.

Mike Kimball, Al Pacino, Alvino Rey, Moby, David Bowie, Jimmy Buffet, Stephen King and Others

Tentative September 29, 2006 Rants for The humble Farmer Public Radio Show which you can hear on the Internet: www.TheHumbleFarmer.com

http://playersring.org/

http://www.playersring.org/2006-2007%20Season/Best%20enemies.htm

Mike Kimball’s, one of Maine’s foremost authors, has written another play called "Best Enemies.” It opens in Portsmouth on October 6 and runs for three weeks. Mike Kimball’s plays usually sell out, so if you'd like to reserve tickets please call 603-436-8123. You don't have to pay until you show up at the theater. You can get the website in my newsletter, the Whine and Snivel.
+
1. I don’t know about you, but I had a good time at the Common Ground Fair and I’d like to pass along some of the things I learned there. Mark told me that there is spiritual nutrition in waffles. And this --- Some people say their pottery is unique, but mine really is. That from George the Potter. Someone told me that a suicide bomber had been captured and sentenced to death in Jordan. And a woman wearing a sweat shirt saying that she had climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro left the fair early on Saturday because of the rain.
+
2. A woman came up to me at the Common Ground fair and asked where she could get a cup of hot coffee. I said, “You must be new to the area.”
+
3. When I meet you, you know what my first question is. “What do you have your doctorate in?” And after that I usually ask you what you do. One woman told me that she was a retired police officer. And I told her that the last time I met a retired police officer was last winter and that in the course of our conversation he said that back before he retired whenever he and his partner found someone causing trouble, they’d haul them into an alley and beat them. And she said, “That wasn’t all that long ago.”
+
4. In one of the many delightful but all too short conversations I had with you and other radio friends at the Common Ground Fair, someone brought up the topic of certain toys that we had when we were kids. You can’t even mention them today. They are too dangerous. And it reminded me of three pages of close type that I transcribed off a recording from my best friend who was, for many years, a consummate artist when it came to getting off an airplane in a strange city and within 15 minutes picking up a nice looking woman who would have supper with him. It was my plan to offer this admittedly thin textbook on how to pick up women as an extra premium to anyone who bought a copy of my book. Of course, women could use the techniques to pick up men. I wanted 25 or so procedures but my friend only knew two or three. He said that when you had one that worked there was no need to develop any more. But I can’t bring myself to publish what my friend told me because, in the wrong hands, we are talking about an extremely powerful and dangerous tool. What do you think? Did you have a toy when you were a kid that scares you to death now when you think of it? Yes, we believe in the free dissemination of information, but I should I hesitate to publish what could easily be construed as a handbook for predators? I’m humble@humblefarmer.com and I value your comments.
+
5. Many people at the Common Ground Fair told me that they enjoyed listening to this show in their cars. For one or two friends this voice was the first voice they heard when driving into Maine for the first time and they wondered if everybody up here talked like this. Many told me that this show helped them with their Friday night drive between work and home. One man told me that listening to my calm and peaceful voice once saved him when he was stuck in his car in a snow storm. Of course, it would be nice to have all these things from you in writing, so people couldn’t accuse me of making them up myself, but for now I have to settle for hearing it from you one-on-one once a year at the Common Ground Fair. Oh, David Bright said that he thinks of the humble as a unit of measure. That is, how far you can drive from the time my show starts until it stops. I would guess that one humble is about from Kittery to Freeport, or from Augusta to Trap Corner, now that the bridge is out on 129. The humble can also be how much lawn you can mow during one show, how many papers you can correct, how many birdhouses you can make or how many pies you can bake. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com What can you accomplish in one humble?
+
6. You might be surprised to hear this, but I met people up at the Common Ground Fair who don’t trust the folks who are running our country. And I suppose you might expect this from people with no practical business experience who only have PhDs and MDs. One of them started chewing my ear about electronic voting machines and how it took two 15-year-old kids about three minutes to crack into an electronic voting machine and adjust the count. He said he wouldn’t even feel safe nowadays with a paper ballot, because even then they can adjust the court.
+
7. http://www.parabrisas.com/d_reya.php

You might want to Google Alvino Rey. I read up on Alvino Rey and he was a very impressive man. Alvino Rey’s daughter was good enough to say hi at the CGF. She claims to be a regular listener. You can easily believe that I had never heard of Alvino Rey, because if I could afford a truckload of paper I would write a book called, Famous People I Have Never Heard Of. Last week in Philadelphia I sat in the front row while two guys interviewed a singer nobody has ever heard of called Moby. They asked Moby what he thought when he learned that he’d sold 10 million records and Moby said, “Clerical error.” I like Moby. He is a guitar virtuoso, a very astute observer of the human condition, and a very funny man. I think that his critic friends who were on stage with him said that he wrote part of the sound track for a movie called Heat, with Robert Di Nero and Al Pacino, and I plan to see Heat just because I think Moby is a smart guy who should be listened to. Moby mentioned another --- I guess he is a singer --- called David Bowie, and said that when he goes over to David Bowie’s house for a barbeque he thinks to himself, “Wow, I can’t believe that I’m here at my favorite singer’s house having supper with him.” You will remember that it was only a year or two back that I heard of Jimmy Buffet, and that was only because one day he filled up Tenants Harbor with his yacht. One of the filthy rich with a house down there on the harbor saw Jimmy Buffet’s boat in the harbor and sent one of his employees down to invite Jimmy Buffet up for a drink --- thinking that it was Warren Buffet, because my Tenants Harbor neighbor had never heard of Jimmy Buffet, either. But you must know that we all live in our isolated little worlds and I’m going to give you an example. A couple of years ago Jesse Jackson came to Maine for a political rally. When he heard they were going to pick him up in a Mercedes, he said he didn’t want to be picked up in a Mercedes. He wanted to ride in a truck. So he was picked up in a truck. And Jesse Jackson had no idea of who he was riding with when the driver of that truck leaned over to shake hands and said, “Hi, I’m Stephen King.”
+
8. And while I’m talking about people I’ve never heard of, there was a very pleasant and inordinately attractive woman who introduced herself to me at the CGF. And while I was talking with this woman she introduced me to her son and her daughter who were also very nice. And I hadn’t talked with her very long before I invited her to come down to our house for supper, just like I do with you and everybody else, even though I couldn’t help but think that she looked like the kind of woman who would be married to a king in some small European country. And when I asked her what she and her husband did, just like I do with you and everybody else, I learned that her husband is a well known singer, whose name I cannot remember, who sang or played or wrote a very popular song years ago that I know I have heard because, as Olive Wendell Holmes once said, it contained words like pie, sky and die that fit together by an amazing coincidence. Isn’t it interesting that I would not be intimidated in the presence of this famous singer, any more than I would be by the most famous football or basketball player on earth, simply because I have never heard of them. But if someone like Jay Davis or David Cole or Matt Dunlap or Will Sugg were to come down for supper I’d be in awe of them because of their achievements.
+
9. You’ve heard me say that it doesn’t bother me a bit when someone drops by unannounced for dinner or supper. After all, what is the big deal? The way my wife cooks, although she’d deny it, there is always enough for two more. After her daughter’s wedding banquet, everybody in the family thawed and ate American chop suey for the next two years. Even as I speak there are the remnants of two or three complete meals in the refrigerator --- enough to feed 6 or more people--- something that would be unheard of in the home of a bachelor. Dig it out and throw it in the micro when company comes. And on top of that there are cans of soup in the cellar way and boxes of cereal. I would rather open a can of soup or eat cereal than eat an expensive $10 meal in the best restaurant in the world --- unless you count the crabmeat rolls at Perry’s gas station in Stockton Springs or hot turkey sandwiches at Moody’s Diner. Anyway, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, feels she has to prepare a great meal with special desert for guests. I don’t. I was talking with my third cousin Egon Alexandersson in Falkenburg about this a couple of weeks ago and he said that his father and mother had the same situation in their home. His mother made a big fuss any time anyone would come to visit, but his father Thure didn’t think it was necessary. Thure had a saying that enabled him to be a great host who was always glad to welcome guests and I’m going to copy it out and paste it over the door to our dining room. Dar finns vatnet I kranen --- There is water in the faucet.
+
10. Please listen very closely to The humble Farmer. You never know when I might mention your name or repeat something of value that you told me. Yes, I met Sydney Bechet’s godchild at the Common Ground Fair. Her name is Sydney. Two nice women who listen to the show told me that their grandfather played with Red Nichols and the Dorsey Brothers. The name in my notebook is Tracy Perez. Someone else told me that he once heard me quoting him on this radio show just as a whole crowd of people came in the room laughing and talking so he never got to savor, or even hear, his 15 seconds of fame. Even Dave Rowe had to go back to my July 21 archived show to hear the good things I said about his father, Tom Rowe. And while I’m thinking about it, someone, whose name I don’t even dare mention, came up to me at the CGF, looked all around to make sure that nobody was looking, leaned over and whispered in my ear: “If God hadn’t intended for us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.”
+
11. Thank you for visiting with me at the CGF. Many of you told me about things that you heard me say over the years that, for some reason, you still remember. You asked me to dig out the story about Paunchamides, the hedonist and Procrastines, the student, and read that again for you. Someone mentioned my theory which explained the origin of language. And Arthur --- Arthur said that when I told about seeing the movie Mrs. Henderson Presents it took him back to his childhood days and running for shelter in England. The boys picked up parts of bombs and brought them into school. He told me that one day they heard planes which they thought were the RAF coming back from bombing Germany, but it was 129 German bombers that flattened Bristol. I’ve put off buying one of those small recording devices and when Arthur said all these things and more, I wish I’d bought one.

And now, just for you, by special request: Without productive, culturally-transmitted language, the proliferation of human culture as a whole would never have taken place. But how did language ever start? For years linguists advanced theories that would account for this singular human phenomenon. We have the ding dong theory, that is, that there is a mystic harmony that exists between sound and meaning. Man was able to give a vocal expression to every external impression. And we have the bow wow theory. That is, that man created language by imitating the sounds of animals. Others believe that man acquired language as the result of evolutionary changes in the structure of his mind. Now, I would like to advance the even more plausible itch theory. That is, that language evolved out of necessity when a man needed to tell his wife where to scratch his back. The first words ever spoken, were probably, “Up, up, over, no, the other way to the right, to the right, up, down just a bit, yah, yah right there. Go round and round right there.”
+
12. END. A man came up to me at the Common Ground Fair and said that his name was Harold Mosher and that 28 or so years ago he used to work with me in the Navigator Motel in Rockland for our good friend, the late, great Paul Devine. And Harold asked me if I could remember working with him and I said that I couldn’t. And I said to Harold, “How in the world, after 28 years, can you remember me?” And Harold said, “You used to hang your underwear out to dry in the lobby.”

A Letter From My Radio Friend Trip

This from Radio Friend Trip:

A car company can move its factories to Mexico and claim it's a free market.

A toy company can out source to a Chinese subcontractor and claim it's a free market.

A shoe company can produce its shoes in south east Asia and claim it's a free market.

A major bank can incorporate in Bermuda to avoid taxes and claim it's a free market.

We can buy HP Printers made in Mexico.

We can buy shirts made in Bangladesh.

We can purchase almost anything we want from 20 different countries.

But when the elderly buy their prescription drugs from a Canadian pharmacy they are called un-American.

Common Ground Fair, September 2006, handout

The other day while thinking about guns I looked up the Second Amendment. It says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” I’m not a Supreme Court Justice, but I think that means we can keep guns in case we need to serve in the militia. And I interpret serve in the militia to mean a license to shoot folks from away who swagger into St. George and try to impose their form of government on me. How do you feel about that? Do Maine people still need guns in their homes, loaded and ready to repel invaders? Of course you will remember that when Hitler went into Poland and Denmark and Holland, all those young boys, his troops if you will, didn’t think of themselves as invaders --- Hitler’s young boys had been raised and trained to believe that they were liberating forces. Like almost every invading army that has ever walked the planet, their job was to get those shoulders back and get in there and free those poor oppressed people. During the early 1940s a very common word was “propaganda.” I heard it all the time. I didn’t know what propaganda meant, but I knew that it had something to do with the war. Any adult who has read a comprehensive history book realizes that propaganda is an integral component of all wars. So --- you don’t have to read too many history books before you realize that any foreign troops marching into St. George would have been told, long before they left home, that they were liberating forces. That’s the way these things have to work. If young boys can’t be convinced that they are an important part of a noble cause in a far away land, seeing a few friends picked off while swimming butt-naked in the Long Cove quarry might discourage a few of the brighter ones. Even those who came here seeking cultural enrichment might think of a more congenial place to find it. Imagine how surprised all those innocent young boys would be, arriving here, expecting a warm welcome by the general populace once they freed us from our oppressive town manager and wicked governor, only to find so many of us sniping away at them from behind every stone wall and tree. In their young one-track minds, it naturally follows that anyone who doesn’t welcome them must be a fanatical insurgent who has to be hunted down and shot like a rat. They weren’t told that The Second Amendment gives us the right to defend our families, our homes, our way of life and that we will jolly well do it. They are young. They can’t realize that no matter how bad things might be here, we really don’t appreciate liberators from away who kill our friends and family while shooting their way into town with a promise to set us free. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, and I must admit that if St. George were occupied by foreign troops, I’d hesitate to break out the glass with my gun barrel and shoot at them from my living room window. They only do that in cowboy movies. When the Concord patriots shot at the British soldiers from their homes, the soldiers went inside and put all the men to death. I’ve learned from history, so I’d be more likely to sit around a smoldering fire out in the woods, eating horsemeat with my neighbors, while figuring out how to pick them off one at a time. My high school history teacher, Mr. Honeywell, used to say, “No doubt about it.” No doubt about it: Blasting away at unwanted occupying forces from behind stone walls and trees is a time honored American tradition, established by our gritty ancestors who didn’t like being bullied. Yes, there might have a been a few wimps or moderates who initially didn’t care if it went one way or the other, but every time the British killed another fanatical patriot, a dozen or so of his indifferent friends and relatives were nudged over the line and reached for their muskets. Now that all the smoke and dust has settled, everyone agrees that King George III wasn’t all that clever. The only prudent thing he did for the British was to hire Hessian soldiers to take some of the fire. I wish I hadn’t looked up the Second Amendment because I don't have time to consider all of the attendant ramifications. Chris Faye ought to write a novel about how you and I would react if Maine were invaded. Sandra Dickson might illustrate it --- if she could bring herself to paint a dead horse.
+
You will remember that in George Orwell’s 1984, even the most common every-day act became a political statement. But you, of course, realize that any common every-day act can be interpreted as political commentary.

The other day Marsha said,
“Get rid of that tube of toothpaste. I’ve squeezed it and pounded on it and I can’t get any more out of it.”

I said, “There are those who can.”

+
Page 2

+
While reading in my Encyclopedia Britannica about Salvatore Quasimodo, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959, I also learned that Fascism is a radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, extreme nationalism, anti-liberalism, militarism and authoritarianism. Unfortunately, Fascism is much like streptococcus bacilli: most of us don’t even know it when we see it and even specialists in the field might quibble over a comprehensive definition.

Because I have recently not only been forced to take off my shoes before boarding a plane but have been patted down to strip me of my toothpaste and bag balm --- arguably meaningless symbolic gestures implemented to acclimate a population to mindless obedience --- I read further, hoping to learn to identify Fascism and thereby determine if it could be gaining a foothold in this land of the free and the home of the brave. This is what I read.

Around 1921 an Italian Prime Minister named Giolitti permitted the usual government influence on elections by corruption. This gave Mussolini and his fledgling fascists a slight edge and they immediately attacked Giolitti for his support of the League of Nations (a world government organization) and for his belief in the methods of parliamentary democracy. Gradually building up a nationwide party organization containing extreme undesirables, the Fascists nearly always had more money than their opponents and moved with greater ruthlessness, although, at every step, Mussolini claimed to be the defender of law and order.

The industrialists were naturally in sympathy with a movement that stood for lower wages and fat, padded contracts. Although the economy had improved it was to their advantage to create the impression that without Fascism, economic breakdown was right around the corner, caused by Socialist incompetence.

The uneducated were naturally receptive to Fascist propaganda and disorderly elements on every level of society welcomed the violence and its attendant opportunity to plunder. Even then, it was not the strength of the Fascists that assured their success but the disorganization and silence of their opponents in the intellectual community. Owners of small Italian businesses discovered only much later that handing over power to people who claimed to be protecting their country with murder and openly proclaimed their contempt of parliamentary institutions would cost them and their country dear.

For years there was no overt establishment of dictatorship. Only gradually were old ways and old institutions changed and nothing was done abruptly that might alarm people or make them realize that a revolution had taken place. The wealthy were courted by cutting their taxes. For permission to become rich and corrupt the gerarchi supported their leader’s irresponsible decisions. The inefficiency and graft of his department heads were accepted as inevitable.

When an Italian was killed by bandits in the Balkans, Mussolini and other indignant, patriotic profit-seeking Italians had their long-hoped-for excuse to go to war.

To his credit, until they strung him up by the heels, Mussolini’s self confidence never waned and he continued to have a pathetic trust in his own powers of intuition, even after plunging his country into that disastrous war for which he was obviously so unprepared.

As you know, the Encyclopedia Britannica is a fat volume, there is much more in there about the rise of Fascism in Italy, but a continuation and refining of my studies would be no more than an unproductive, academic exercise. Because --- in reading the few paragraphs above, you can see that nothing that I have written there could suggest a parallel between the rise of Fascism in Italy in the 1920s and what is happening in our country today.

You may sleep well tonight. It simply couldn’t happen here.
+

humble@humblefarmer.com
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/

You Can Run But You Can't Hide

Were you watching the news when President Bush walked up to a smiling President Clinton who stepped forward, shook hands with the man and didn’t seem to mind being photographed with him?

It really wasn’t all that remarkable because President Clinton isn’t a republican running for office.