Top Five Types Of Predators

My favorite ongoing television newsmagazine expose series continues this Tuesday, with a sweeps month extravanganza of six new episodes. Of course, I speak of no other than Dateline NBC's "To Catch A Predator." While I can watch an endless stream of pedophiles be lured into a house only to be confronted by Chris Hansen all day long, I do have my favorite types of predators.

1. The White-Collar Predator
I expect the sketchy perverts with the biker shirts or the excessive gold jewelry to come rolling into the sting house. But I love seeing the mild-mannered, buttoned-down doctor or the clean-cut Indian software engineer stop by for some little underage playtime. It goes to show that no matter what our station in life, all of us have needs.

2. The Naked Guy
It hasn't been done much lately, but sometimes, once the predator would enter the house, the decoy would ask him to take his clothes off. Naturally, the guy would comply, because that request is not the least bit weird. I don't quite know what the purpose of this little exercise was, beyond humiliating the guy by forcing him to stand there buck naked when Chris Hansen walked into the room. Actually, that's a purpose in and of itself.

3. The Pleader
When Chris Hansen performs his grand entrance, many of the predators will insist they are only there to make friends with the decoy or help her with homework. They will apologize profusely, sometimes dropping to their knees, explaining that they made a terrible mistake. The best Pleaders are those who mistakenly think that Chris Hansen is a police officer, or even better, the girl's father.

4. The Heinously Ugly Guy
I actually feel a little bit sorry for this guy. The only way he can get sex is passing himself off on the internet as some kind of Adonis and then taking advantage of a supposed 16-year-old girl. This guy has to know something is up, since he has never succeeded at propositioning anyone so easily. Everyone deserves action once in a while, but still, there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it, and while The Heinously Ugly Guy chose the wrong way, it's largely out of necessity.

5. The Guy Who Knows Something's Up
There are actually two sub-types of The Guy Who Knows Something's Up. The first sees Chris Hansen and bolts right back out the front door before he's confronted, only to land directly in the arms of the waiting police. The second has seen the Dateline series before and knows he's fallen into a trap. Yet, when Chris Hansen asks him why he still showed up at the house, the guy always has some ridiculously lame excuse.