“[F]ormer MTV star” Connor Smith, NBC Chicago reports, “is wanted in the Chicago area after he was accused [of] trying to meet a child for a sexual encounter.” Smith is accused of “traveling to meet a minor, grooming a minor and disseminating harmful material.”

While I’ve never heard of this “star,” he sounds like a bad dude who’s up to some very bad things. But perhaps not quite as bad as one might think from the story’s lead paragraphs. As it turns out, Smith was “communicating with an undercover detective … posing as a girl under the age of 15.”

I see quite a few stories like this one, and each of them makes me wonder: What’s being done for the actual children who are actual victims of actual grooming and actual sexual abuse?

According to statistics from the National Center for Victims of Crime, one in five girls and one in 20 boys are victims of child sexual abuse nationwide.

Any way you slice the demographics, that’s millions of real victims.

And the vast majority of those victims are molested by people they know well (especially family members), not by randos who chat them up via phone or web apps.

How many of those real crimes go unsolved — in fact, are never even noticed — because law enforcement agencies spend their employees’ time and your money manufacturing sick fantasies and arresting those who fall for stings based on said fantasies, instead of doing their supposed jobs?

If Smith did what the cops say he did, chances are pretty good that he’s done it before, for real, to an actual victim or victims.

But in THIS case, all he’s actually accused of is talking dirty with, exchanging dirty pictures with, and attempting to meet with, an adult entertainer who pays union dues to the Fraternal Order of Police instead of to Actors’ Equity.

How much of that actor’s — and other cops’ — time was spent purveying free porn and setting up an ambush with an eye toward making a splash in the news, rather than on following up on actual tips, interviewing actual victims, and tracking down actual criminals who committed actual crimes?

Someone should ask that question next time the Lake County Sheriff’s Office comes to taxpayers demanding budget and manpower increases. Perhaps  a local community theater troupe can fill in and free up the county’s law enforcement budget for a focus on “serving and protecting.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

They’re over Alaska! They’re over Montana! They’re over Lake Huron! They’re over … oh, wait, they just got shot down. Whew! That was close!

Tesla’s engineers are gathering this week in Washington with an eye on dramatically improving their vehicles’ acceleration profiles by studying how fast the US government managed to get from “nothing there,” to “balloon of some kind,” to “spy balloon,” to “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,” to seemingly flying squadrons of military aircraft over every child’s birthday party and using expensive missiles to take down stray helium containers.

From, you know, an abundance of caution. Wouldn’t want the Chinese to find out about those low, low prices at the Walmart in Billings, Montana on pretty much everything but the giant sub-$100 helium balloons which US Senator Josh Hawley finds “very disturbing” (as if we didn’t know he’s already very disturbed in general). To surreptitiously gather THAT information, they’d have to surveil an Amazon.com distribution center.

Perhaps we should all hide under our beds — except that they were probably made you-know-where — or before long we may end up carrying surveillance devices around in our pockets and purses 24/7, inadvertently feeding Beijing valuable information on cosmetics use and videos on the gustatory joy of laundry pods.

In the immortal words of Joe Biden: “C’mon, man!”

In anything like a sane world, “there’s a balloon over [insert latest location here]” wouldn’t make the news at all, crowding out important information like the local Pop Warner league’s box scores and someone’s great-aunt’s recipe for peanut butter no-bake cookies, let alone become the basis for Defcon Freakout.

Quick, no search engine cheating:

How many billions of your dollars has the US government given to Ukraine since last February?

For how long, and why, has the US government had in place the crippling sanctions on Syria which it lifted over the weekend to facilitate earthquake relief?

Heck, how many face piercings is your own teenager sporting these days?

If you can’t answer those questions, but can point at a spot on a map (to within 50 miles of) where a US F-22 finally shot down that first “Chinese spy balloon,” it’s not because you’re a bad person.

It’s because you’re being conned by politicians who’d rather distract you with made-up issues of no real importance whatsoever than risk the possibility that you might start paying attention and take notice of the crazy stuff they put over on you 24/7/365.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In 1970, economist Milton Friedman set out a bold claim in a New York Times op-ed: “The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase its Profits.”

More than 50 years later, we find ourselves embroiled in episode X of “OMG, a restaurant is introducing a food I find suspicious, they’ve gone  WOKE.”

Last August, it was Cracker Barrel’s “Impossible Sausage[TM]” offering. Now it’s Chick-fil-A’s  cauliflower sandwich. Twitter’s a-twitter. Fox is flummoxed. Another social conservative foodie favorite off the reservation and catering to those dirty hippies! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

Don’t these folks ever calm down?

While often wildly misinterpreted as calling for the freedom of corporations to poison its customers directly or indirectly if it enhanced their bottom lines, Friedman’s point back then was more nuanced and made quite a bit of sense:

Increased corporate profits are — all other things being equal, anyway, even if that seldom happens — a function of customer satisfaction. If what you sell and how you sell it pleases more people, you end up selling more stuff to more customers.

Making more people happier is pretty much the only measurable way to define “social responsibility.” And the profit and loss statement tells the tale of success or failure at doing that.

So, why did Chick-fil-A put time, money, and work into developing a “plant-forward” product? “[I]t was becoming more and more prevalent,” the chain’s director of menu and packaging, Leslie Neslage, told USA Today, “that customers really want to find ways to increase vegetables in their diet.”

After experiments with e.g. mushrooms and tomatoes, cauliflower won out with focus groups. It pleased more people. It seemed likely to bring in more customers, be they chicken-lovers doing Meatless Monday or health-conscious eaters, perhaps dining with their chicken-loving families. And, therefore, to sell more food and generate higher profits.

It may or may not work out, but it seems pretty “socially responsible” in the Friedmanite sense. And pretty much the opposite of “woke,” if that word means anything other than “sure to feed the emotional fires of the perpetually outraged.”

Simmer down, social conservatives. Don’t panic. Chick-fil-A isn’t replacing its to-die-for Spicy Deluxe sandwich or delectable waffle fries. You’ll still be able to get them, if I don’t get to them first. And since you probably use the drive-thru window, the likelihood of   a scary encounter with one of those filthy, bike-riding, cauliflower-eating hippies is minimal.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY