ABC 20/20 last week ran a solid smackdown (article, video clip above) of Dateline NBC’s regular sleazefest, To Catch A Predator, by digging into the disaster that befell a Texas town when Chris Hansen stopped by to play. The concerns raised by ABC are weighty and valid, although my longtime complaint about the show is more simplistic: Hanson always says his shows are investigations, but after running multiple set-ups with the same result, how long can you reasonably call something an investigation? Does he think we’ll learn something new by repetitively orchestrating the same stunt? It’d be like me buying a donut and saying, “I need to investigate if this donut is any good.” I eat it, it’s good, and then I buy another one and say, “Now I need to investigate if this donut is any good.”

But here’s the tough part about criticizing To Catch a Predator: doing so earns you praise from people who, uh, take Chris Hansen’s efforts far too personally. Like “oceanstreat,” a 46-year-old on YouTube, who described the show thusly underneath the 20/20 video:

They’ve ruined many people’s lives for nothing but profit and ratings. They’re nothing more than soft-core porn masquerading as “saving children”, while at the same time playing off the sexuality of young people.

Yikes. Someone needs to sic Chris Hansen on this guy.