Predator panic -- it might get worse, but it couldn't get sillier

Imagine this. You are at a Monster Jam event, and you see a booth selling pink, fuzzy toy trucks. You buy one for your little girl, and then you find out -- how? -- that the heart pattern on the toy is a secret symbol to pedophiles, and that your purchase has just marked your child, according to channel 8 in Florida, as one "ready to be traded for sex" to a pedophile who has a preference for girls.

Whaaaat????

My mind was instantly flooded with questions: How do the pedophiles match up with the pink-truck-owning children? Scour neighborhoods looking for the trucks lying in a yard or clutched in the hands of the ill-fated child? And what if the parent isn't home and a baby-sitter is? Will the pedophile make an appointment to come  back when the parent is home to complete the sale, or is the baby-sitter authorized to do so? Or are they staked out at the venues that are selling the toys and swoop in right then to complete the transaction?  What if a parent unconcerned with the whole color-gender thing bought the pink truck with the heart for his son? Would the pedophile union sue for false representation when a member went to claim his girl-child and instead was given a boy?

In what I suppose is a desperate attempt to introduce some note of authenticity into this fantasy, channel 8 interviews a detective with the cyber crimes unit at the Pasco Sheriffs' Dept. He speaks of the pedophiles he "busts" and the horrors he sees of children raped and tortured on a daily basis and how what keeps him going is protecting children and putting the bad guys away.

And there goes my crazy mind again. What does anything he is saying have to do with heart symbols on stuffed toy trucks?

And then the company who makes the toys, the same company who owns the Monster Jam franchise, is asked about the symbol, and they freak out, avow all innocence in this nefarious plot -- give me time; I'll figure out how it works -- and recall the trucks.

Again -- whaaat???

Now I have a couple of serious questions. Did channel 8 ask anyone -- the cyber crimes detective, any other police department, the FBI, anyone -- approximately how many children have fallen victim to the pink truck caper and have been sold to pedophile rings? Surely the sale of the toys can be traced to the duplicitous parents; are any of their little girls "missing"? Has an investigation been launched? The toy manufacturer said they haven't been contacted by anyone in law enforcement. Huh? They are serving as a conduit between those who want to buy children and those who are selling them, and law enforcement doesn't even contact them?

And, finally, how long will it be before the toy manufacturer / Monster Jam promoter realizes what insanity this is and sues everyone involved for slander, loss of income, and damage to their reputation?

There are idiots, and they walk among us

I have a friend who often expresses the reluctance to say, "Well, now I've seen everything!" because, he claims, something more ridiculous is sure to come along.

And he's right.

A state senator in Florida has filed a bill "that would make it a crime for registered sex offenders to use a remote control drone to spy on kids or take their pictures." 

A drone. 

This is a prime example of what my buddy Lenore Skenazy likes to call "worst-first thinking." That is the tendency, in any situation, to think of the absolutely worst thing that could possibly happen and then proceed as though it would. This, however, goes right beyond worst-first thinking and off into the realms of "what were you smoking when you dreamed that up?"

The good senator admits she has "never heard of a case where a sex offender used a drone to stalk a child, but she contends it's bound to happen eventually."

This is the same reasoning that has put Halloween restrictions for registrants in place in three-fourths of our states in spite of the fact that no case can be found of a child being abducted by a registrant on Halloween in America and in spite of the fact that, year after year, both the states that have such restrictions and those that do not report zero such instances.

But getting back to drones--what's next? How about a law against registrants tunneling underground from outside their 1000-feet restriction areas and popping up, like a gopher, in a playground, camera in hand? Or dropping from parachutes into a park? Or, a-la-Trojan Horse, wrapping oneself inside a huge box, bow on top, and being delivered to a child's birthday party?

I suppose it would be too much to hope that some legislator might go for facts and evidence and propose legislation shown to actually be effective in increasing public safety and doing something toward actual prevention of child sexual abuse.

I guess that would REALLY be in the realm of the ridiculous.