14 SEP 06: THE BIG BROTHER HOUSE

Dateline NBC began showing the results of a Harris County child predator sting Wednesday night. We're now waiting to learn whether anyone has gone to the undercover house in Fortson, and put up a "Tourism Works Here" sign.

News of the child predator sting came out in late July, when 20 suspects appeared in Harris County court [30 Jul]. Dateline NBC's Chris Hansen said it happened in "rural Fortson, 90 minutes south of Atlanta." We thank him for not undoing all the good publicity from the Columbus Northern Little League team.

Only eight of the 20 Fortson suspects were shown on Dateline NBC Wednesday. The others will be shown on three upcoming Friday nights. I haven't seen these "To Catch a Predator" shows before - so does the audience vote on which one gets the death penalty?

The Perverted Justice web site and the Harris County Sheriff's Office arranged meetings in Fortson through a Yahoo! Chat room, then printed out logs of the rather steamy conversations. I've never even been able to save Yahoo chats on my hard drive - so how did the law officers do it? Was their "Active X" turned into "Active XXX" for cases like this?

Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley made a short appearance during the Dateline NBC program, more than halfway into the hour. Yes, he was seen in that dress uniform with four stars on each side - the sort of outfit I don't think Muscogee County Sheriff Ralph Johnson even wears on Patriots Day.

But the political winner of the night was NOT Sheriff Mike Jolley. That prize goes to Harris County School Board member Karen Hopkins, whose reelection commercial appeared on WLTZ three times before and during Dateline NBC. Yet Hopkins never said how she would improve the education of 14-year-old decoys -- which I think her drop-dead gorgeous blonde daughter could be.

(Isn't that amazing -- Karen Hopkins appearing three times during a child predator sting hour? You'd think that crime-fighter Mark Taylor would have shown up at least once....)

But let's get to the real alleged "stars" of the show. Dateline NBC began with an Atlanta construction worker with the online name "Scooby Doo at 101." That must be the cartoon character's age in dog years now....

Scooby Doo at 101 asked several leading questions of an online decoy. For instance, he asked if the girl "knows how to ride." He must not have realized this weekend's big rodeo is in Hamilton, not Fortson.

When Harris County Sheriff's officers arrested Scooby Doo at 101, the suspect said: "Why don't you just shoot me?" Once again, we see the Kenneth Walker case was an exception and not the rule....

The next guest in the Fortson house was "Zavior 01," who is a volunteer "media director" at a church. I guess that means he's in charge of radio and TV broadcasts - and I wonder if those broadcasts talk more about donating money than avoiding sin.

Zavior 01 asked a decoy during an online chat if the presumed teenage girl was wet. That is SUCH a Southern thing. If we're not divided over racial matters, we're divided into wet counties and dry counties.

Then came "Need a Friend to Talk to 2005," a carpenter from the Macon area. He actually showed up at the Fortson house with an overnight bag - so perhaps after molesting the teenage girl, he was going to offer cigarettes to smoke the next morning.

Need a Friend to Talk to 2005 happens to have a MySpace section in which he declares, "Jesus rocks!" OK, but did he bother saying that prayer about "lead us not into temptation"?

During his online chat with a decoy, Need a Friend to Talk to 2005 asked: "Can you do deep throat?" Huh?! I haven't even heard anyone imitate Richard Nixon in years....

Another suspect at the Fortson house was "Broken Empires" - only he drove up as an arrest was in progress, and decided to drive away. Sheriff's officers tracked him down and arrested him on Interstate 185. For what reason - a broken speed limit?

The chat log of Broken Empires shows he asked for a teenage decoy's bra size. So apparently it's against the law even to shop at Victoria's Secret, before you date a teenager.

Then there was "Hold You Closer 2003," who wrote online if he met a teenage decoy, "my tongue would be all over you." If this man was trying to get people to adopt animals at the Humane Society, that sort of language might be acceptable.

A man named "Perfect Buddy Georgia" admitted to Dateline NBC he was desperate for a girl in his life. In fact, he was SO desperate that he sent a teenage decoy eight pictures of his (ahem) secret parts. I never watched "Sex and the City," but I don't think they went even that far....

Another visitor to the Fortson house was "SW GA Male Yess" - who admitted to detectives he's a former Baptist minister. He reportedly proposed a threesome with the teenage decoy and his current girlfriend. Once and for all: this is NOT a proper way to illustrate a trinity.

SW GA Male Yess actually tried to run from the Fortson house and elude arrest. But a Harris County Sheriff's officer stopped him with a stun gun - the closest this Baptist minister probably wants to come to a lightning bolt from the heavens.

The last suspected predator to visit Fortson was "Tunnels 12000" - a single father of two who actually builds tunnels. Thankfully, the house in Fortson didn't have any where he could hide....

Tunnels 12000 admitted to Dateline NBC he's a lonely 38-year-old man. So why go online, to find friendship with a teenage girl? Whatever happened to the good old days - when lonely old men went to the end of the bar, like Norm on "Cheers?"

One issue Dateline NBC did not address was the complaint some attorneys of the suspects have raised - that the men are victims of entrapment. For instance, I couldn't help noticing how the decoy girl inside the house in Fortson invited so many men to have "sweet tea." In my case, fudge brownies would have served about the same purpose.

I was a bit surprised Dateline NBC put "To Catch a Predator" in the so-called "family hour" of prime-time TV, at 8:00 p.m. ET. But then again, it must have been a tough decision -- either to show that crackdown early, or that blonde schoolteacher accused of seducing a teenage student. NBC decided to keep the guys watching as long as possible....

District Attorney Grey Conger told the Ledger-Enquirer the other day he plans to get a copy of the Dateline NBC tape, and use it in trying the suspected predators. If the arrests and explanations of the suspects don't convict them, the grim-looking face of Stone Phillips just might.

E-MAIL UPDATE: Our dumpster discussion on Wednesday brought this comment, which is similar to one we received a few weeks ago [4 Aug]:

there is a noise ordinance on what time dumpsters can be dumped...get the name off the dumpster call the company ..tell them you will call special enforcement if they violate this ordinance...I think is says they can't be dumpted between 10PM and 5AM..I'll look it up in city code book and let you know correctly..My neighbor has handled the one for my neighborhood..Even went to AL to talk to company home office..."Dumping the dumpster" was curtailed about a yr now has started back at Fri 4AM....This was reported to special enforcement..A Mr Green told me he came out at 4AM caught truck issued a warning..I talked to a supervisor at special enforcement there was no record of the warning..Mr Green told me a little green lie to get me off his back..

Thanks for the update - and remember: it's not easy being Mr. Green.

(Maybe this should be the next Dateline NBC project: "To Catch a Noisemaker.")

Now for some quick highlights from the Wednesday news:

+ WRBL reported panhandling is increasing in the 1000 block of Broadway. What makes this so surprising is that the beggars are NOT business owners, who lost sales to the "StreetScape" work.

(Business owners told WRBL some of the beggars are moving south of Broadway, into the Historic District. Well, I wondered where they'd been all summer. Maybe it's already too cold to work in Minnesota and Michigan.)

+ The Columbus Chamber of Commerce introduced a new program for small businesses called "iWOW." Please don't be confused. That's short for "Incubator Without Walls" - it is NOT what people say when pictures of Eva Longoria show up on their iPods.

+ The owner of Valdosta's Wild Adventures theme park filed for bankruptcy protection. Apparently this was done to avoid a wild adventure by the company's accountants....

+ A Zogby poll showed Libertarian Garrett Hayes receiving eight percent of the vote in the Georgia Governor's race. Does this mean Georgians are fed up with the two main parties - or does it mean Sonny Perdue and Mark Taylor's commercials are so bland that few people care about them?

(Meanwhile, aides to Secretary of State Cathy Cox say she'll miss this weekend's state Democratic convention in College Park - because she'll be out of the country. When she's going that far to avoid Mark Taylor, Georgia Republicans may have found their next Zell Miller.)

+ Instant Message to the board of Hewlett-Packard: What's all this stuff I'm hearing about your company and "pretexting?" Is that where you write out a text message, before you send it?

BURKARD'S BEST BETS: Gas for $2.39 a gallon at Spectrum, Wynnton Road and Brown Avenue.... 20-ounce sodas for 50 cents at Walgreens.... and the Mayor's "Patriotic Blood Drive" from 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. today at the Government Center, to learn if you're red or blue-blood....

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