So, first post in a while. I have been busy since my mother-in-law has joined our household. It's going very well so far, so wish me the best with that...
Back to Oprah. I was going to post about her first week on the air this season, about how I thought it was pretty typical, nothing too remarkable. But then she blew that week out of the water with her show that aired on September 16th.
It was a show that reminds you that Oprah is more than just fodder for tabloids, or a new age nut to ridicule. The power she has is a bit scary at times, but when put to proper use...
O opened the show with an illustration of how truly dangerous and pervasive the internet can be. She showed a map of the US, and a single point on Washington, D.C. which represented a single upload of child pornography by a pedophile on a given day not too long ago. She then showed how many times, across the country, that image was uploaded by other creeps in a matter of hours.
The map lit up like a giant Christmas tree -- point after point represented each of the heinous individuals delighting in the horrific exploitation of a child.
This was just one day, with one image.
Her guests then went on to relate the grand scope of this problem in our country. The statistics are nauseating. The acts the pedophiles are performing on younger and younger victims are unbelievable. The worst part is that experts estimate that less than one half of one percent of predators are even investigated. They are too quick and too savvy and too MANY.
The good news in all this is that a law enforcement officer has developed a software system that has proven highly effective in catching these perverted animals. The only problem is the funding that is needed to bring this system to law enforcement squads across our nation, and to provide the manpower to use the system to stop these monsters and bring them to justice.
Here is the link to the Oprah website's instructions on how to write your congressmen and women an email to urge them to support this funding on a national level with the PROTECT our Children Act.
http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20080911_tows_predators
With all that is going on in the country right now, let's not allow this to get lost in the shuffle.
UPDATE
So, after I posted this, I did a little checking -- even something like this is not without controversy. The members of congress who first came up with this bill are refusing to have it stand alone. The sponsors would only let it pass if it is included in a package of unrelated bills that addresses less vital concerns such as the interstate commerce of non-human primates.
I had already sent my letter via the Oprah site, and I'm ok with that -- not happy about this development, but hopefully legislation will still go through. I just may write my congressmen again and ask that they push it through on its own...
UPDATE II
The act passed in both houses of congress! And I just heard that last December the House passed the Securing Adolescents from Exploitation Online Act, also know as the SAFE Act. This legislation increases the penalties for Internet service providers (ISPs) that host child pornography on their servers. I did not find any record of it passing in the Senate. A new cause, Oprah?
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