May 2000 Archives

Previously on Dateline, Chief Vidiot Correspondent Philip Michaels had vowed to spend an entire week watching nothing but Dateline NBC episodes. After a rather lengthy intro about Dan Quayle that none of us really understood, Philip watched his first Dateline episode, a two-year-old piece about a Marine Staff Sergeant accused of a lurid crime. He was all set to watch Dateline's Tuesday installment when his girlfriend -- a lovely yet sinister woman -- demanded they watch something else.

Now, as our story continues, Philip is about to watch his third consecutive night of Dateline NBC. Philip?

Thanks, Stone.

DATELINE WEDNESDAY

I made sure the girlfriend was safely contained for Wednesday's installment of Dateline. No way she was going to keep me from sampling its nuggets of newsy goodness two nights in a row. And boy, was I glad that I took my phone off the hook, dimmed my apartment lights, and failed to heed repeated knocking on my door. Dateline NBC was just too powerful to miss.

We started off with a segment on a single mother, who was kidnapped by her deadbeat ex-husband and stuffed in the trunk of her own late-model sedan. Only her quick-thinking ingenuity and familiarity with the inner workings of her car allowed her to escape to freedom, some two state lines after her abduction. Then we were treated to a segment on a new DNA technique that helped nab a serial rapist in Louisiana -- but only after the mood-setting bayou music and interviews with several victims recounting each lurid yet apparently indispensable detail of their rapes. Finally, Dateline teamed up with People magazine to deliver a hard-hitting piece on Whitney Houston and the media that hound her.

The power of Dateline NBC and People magazine in one place? Look out, 60 Minutes!

It was on Wednesday night that I noticed another Dateline masterstroke -- reporting on stories with clear villains and distinct heroes. The single-mother who single-handedly freed herself from the trunk of a sedan? Hero. The stringy-haired deadbeat who shoved her in the trunk in the first place? Villain. The police detective who caught the serial rapist in bayou-music-lovin' Louisiana? He-ro! The serial rapist himself? Villain. Big time.

If only every news outlet could take this approach. It would make normally dull stories ever so much interesting. Imagine a piece on banking reform that didn't time examining the minutiae of Depression-era finance laws but instead focused on a sinister banker who foreclosed on widows and cackled a lot and the heroic federal regulator who takes him down. Or a piece on a civil war in a far-off land that eschewed the centuries-old slights and offenses that caused the dispute in favor of a knock-down drag-out interview with the rebel leader in which he promised to "bring the paaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiin!"

It works for pro wrestling. And it works for Dateline.

It's not enough that Dateline redefines the way we digest news; the program also gives a voice to the disenfranchised man on the street with its gripping "Question of the Week" feature. On this evening, the question focused on taxes. Dateline wanted to know if "the right amount, too much or too little." An astonishing 58% said they paid too much. Nobody said they paid too little.

Do you hear that, Washington fat cats? Do something about those taxes! People are paying too much! Dateline has spoken!

DATELINE FRIDAY

No Dateline tonight. I came home, jonesing hard for my almost daily dose of Stone Phillips and Jane Pauley and their take-no-prisoners approach to bringing me the news. I turned on the TV, sat back on the couch and readied myself to be made smarter.

And all I saw was snow. The cable was out.

Bastards! Filthy, devil-worshipping bastards!

I spent the rest of the evening, drafting a letter to the cable company bastards, the snow on my TV where Dateline should be serving as background noise. I let them know about the horrible bind they've put me in, depriving me not only of the source material for my highly scientific study of Dateline but also the most watched newsmagazine in America. I implied that it was not in their best interest to trifle with Dateline -- Stone Phillips knows his way around explosives, if you catch my drift. And as I ended the letter demanding satisfaction for the wrong I had suffered, I secretly vowed to make the cable company dogs pay.

I wonder if they're in league with the girlfriend.

DATELINE SUNDAY

By driving down to the cable company to deliver my grievances in person -- and after a brief parley with the police in which I promised to never do that again -- I ensured that Dateline would flow unfettered into my living room Sunday night. And boy, was I happy I did. You talk all you want to about Easter Sunday or Super Bowl Sunday or even "Sunday in the Park With George." But for my money, they all wither up and die in the awesome presence of Dateline Sunday.

The show featured a report on a story that's received far too little media attention -- the case of a Cuban boy named Elian Gonzalez that seems to have worked Miami's Cuban community into a fine pique. Dateline's chief medical correspondent Bob Arnot -- apparently the mighty commander in Dateline's army of medical reporters -- tracked down a Yale psychiatrist to help us tap into little Elian's brain. And even though the psychiatrist had never met little Elian and could only base his diagnosis on what he had seen in the media, he was able to give a full account of the Cuban boy's psychological state.

I had no idea medical science had advanced so far that doctors no longer even had to meet their patients. But I'm grateful that Dateline NBC brought this new, streamlined form of medical care to my attention. The next time I'm due for a physical, I plan to ask my doctor if we can just do it over the phone. That will save me hours out of my busy schedule -- hours that I can then spend watching Dateline and learning more about this world and its wonderful scientific marvels.

The Yale psychiatrist's diagnosis, by the way, was that all this media hullabaloo was harmful to the delicate psyche of little Elian. Dateline followed that story with a second segment focusing on Elian Gonzalez.

"To keep up with the latest on Elian, stay with NBC and your local NBC stations," warned Maria Shriver, herself an example of our world's many scientific marvels.

Dateline's next story focused on Richard Roundtree -- "Shaft" of the Silver Screen -- and his battle with breast cancer.

I know some of you readers probably read that last sentence and had yourself an immature chuckle at Shaft's expense. You're making your "Who's the black private dick who's a sex machine with a the chicks?" cracks and hooting and hollering and just generally making a ass of yourself.

Well, stop it. This is a serious matter. One out of every 100 cases of breast cancer occurs in men. In fact, 1,400 breast cancer cases will be diagnosed in men this year.

Those are frightening numbers. But the severity of the problem really never hit home with me until I learned that it happened to a celebrity.

So thank you, Dateline NBC -- and your partner in reportage, People magazine. While others would cast a blind eye to celebrities and the diseases that afflict them, you're there with a camera crew, ready to film every emotional second of the interview. And I think I speak for all of America when I say we need more stories on celebrities and their problems and hopes and thoughts on vital issues of the day. Tell me which member of the Friends cast battles psoriasis. That guy on JAG -- does he have any diseases I should know about? And David Hyde Pierce: What does he make of this Elian business?

Dateline closed with another report from Bob Arnot -- the hardest working man in TV journalism -- who took time off of pestering Yale psychiatrists about little Elian's fragile state of mind to file a report on flexible endoscopes. They're medical marvels, those endoscopes, but it seems there's a problem keeping them sterile. In fact, there's a one in 2 million risk that the next time you go in for a procedure involving an endoscope, you could get a nasty infection.

I'm sure endoscope infections are a serious problem, but Bob Arnot's story really failed to hit home with me. Maybe if they would have focused on a celebrity who was treated with an tainted endoscope. Or a little Cuban boy.

Now, that's journalism Dateline-style!

DATELINE FOREVER!

Having spent just a week basking in the warm, newsy glow of Dateline, I have to tell you, I'm hooked. In fact, Monday morning, I cancelled my subscriptions to the local newspaper as well as the half-dozen magazines I get each month. I dropped the various news headlines Web sites I have bookmarked on my browser. And I cleared all the news radio stations from my pre-programmed stereo dial. From now on, Dateline is my only source of news. All those other things were just background noise, cluttering my brain.

Why? Because just one week of Dateline has taught me so much about the world I live in. In just the past seven days alone, I've learned:

• Single mothers are being stuffed in car trunks by their estranged husbands at an alarming rate.

• Sound effects and stock footage add sizzle to even the stalest news stories!

• The greatest threats facing the commonweal are apparently unsafe practices in outpatient procedures, filthy endoscopes and Marine Staff Sergeants.

• There's no new story so perfect that it can stand to have a few lurid sex details thrown in.

• The problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world... especially when there's a Cuban kid on the loose in Miami.

• A disease becomes all the more poignant and virulent when it affects a famous person.

• That Maria Shriver is one freaky looking broad.

Sorry. Got a little carried away there.

Poll after poll indicates that few people trust or even like the media. Maybe those same people who hate the media with every fiber of their being just need to sit down for an evening or two -- or five! -- of Dateline. And then they'll see old-fashioned journalism and newfangled Hollywood razzle-dazzle all mixed together in a pleasing hour of infotainment.

I'm hopeful that other networks will follow Dateline's lead. Already, ABC has 20/20 on a couple nights a week in the time slots not already taken up by Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. And CBS... well, the network is still stuck in its 60 Minutes rut. But maybe one day, CBS will see the error of its ways and bring back the silky smooth tone of West 57th, the Dateline-esque news program that short-sighted suits sent off to the cornfield a decade ago.

In fact, I hope that NBC scraps its entire lineup -- Friends, ER, the whole ball of wax -- and goes all-Dateline all-the-time. Face it, Dateline NBC packs a bigger dramatic wallop than The West Wing, offers more drama than Law & Order and features a kookier cast of characters than Will & Grace. I'm not ashamed to say it -- Dateline NBC is better than all the sitcoms and the dramas on the Peacock Network combined; it's the best fictional program on NBC.

And I think that says it all.

Dan Quayle can tell you all about that.

Back in the day -- the day, in this case, being about a decade or so ago -- Quayle served as our vice president, a gig that put him a plate of poorly refrigerated shrimp cocktail away from the presidency. That was just his day job, though. By night, Quayle served as a whipping boy, the punch line du jour for every two-bit stand-up comic, every would-be wag and the dozens and dozens of late-night talk show hosts produced by our nation's factories every week. Their wacky take? Vice President Quayle was something of a drip. A thick-headed rube who was D-U-M dumb. An ill-read, resume-padding dope who lucked into his position through birth and happenstance.

Why? Because Vice President Quayle was a thick-headed rube, or at least, our first impressions were that he was. He gave speeches littered with malaprops. He railed against the imagined inequities of sitcom characters. He was stumped by simple words in a third-grade spelling bee. Not the sharpest Ginsu in the set.

Then again, a lot of politicians aren't particularly bright, as anyone who's spent more than five minutes watching C-SPAN will tell you. Al Gore says dopey things. Maxine Waters can't string two sentences together without sounding deeply out of her league. And have you ever tried making heads or tails out of what Trent Lott's mumbling about? How come these guys and the dozens upon dozens like them make out OK while poor Dan Quayle is held up to scorn and ridicule?

It helps that Gore, Waters, Lott and the rest have never been caught on tape getting outwitted by nine-year-olds.

First impressions are like that -- cruel and permanent. Dan Quayle could disappear from the face of the earth and then re-emerge years later with a cancer cure, a Mid-East peace plan and a foolproof way to lose weight without giving up chocolate. And you know what the papers will say?

IDIOT VICE PRESIDENT CURES CANCER
Promises To Tackle Poverty Next, Forgets To Zip Up Fly

Sure, it's not fair. But very little about first impressions are. Try as he might, Dan Quayle will always be regarded as a half-wit. No matter what role he plays, Neil Patrick Harris will always be our Doogie. Madonna can have all the kids she wants and get cast against type from now until doomsday -- she'll always be the carefully marketed whore who first shimmied her way into our hearts.

And Dateline NBC will always be the show that rigged up a truck to explode like a county fair fireworks display.

It's been eight years since Dateline NBC debuted. Eight years since producers made the fateful decision to strap a couple sticks of dynamite to the bottom of a GM truck so they could dramatize the deadly fireball that very possibly could result if you drove such a truck and if NBC interns were hiding in your garage with a sack full of C4 and orders to blow things up real good.

We've gone through a record economic expansion since then. We've elected a president... twice. NBC's fortunes have gone from crummy to stellar and back to crummy again. And Dateline NBC is now the most watched news program in the country, by virtue of the fact that the Peacock Network broadcasts it almost continually from dusk 'til dawn.

Yet, mention Dateline NBC to the man on the street, and it will take all of 30 seconds before someone starts cracking wise about wiring Stone Phillips with a megaton of TNT.

Those damned first impressions again. Cruel. Cutting. Lasting.

Sure, it's easy to make fun of Dateline NBC and the way it's spread across NBC's schedule like a metastasized tumor. It's easy to drone on and on about Dateline Monday and Dateline Tuesday and Classic Dateline and Cherry-Flavored Dateline. It's oh-so-easy to joke about how they're going to have to keep dosing Stone Phillips with high-grade amphetamines just to keep him from collapsing from exhaustion on-air. And it would be very easy to make fun of Dateline's checkered past: "Coming up next: A single mother fights for custody of her only child... after we blow the other kids up!"

It's really easy, as a matter of fact. It took me less than a minute to type that paragraph.

But while anyone can make fun of Dateline and its antipathy toward quaint notions like "journalistic integrity" and "substance over style," I'm willing to bet that few of you wisecrackers out there have ever sat down and given Dateline a chance. Oh, maybe you saw Dateline's Question of the Week segment while you were waiting for Law & Order to come on. Or maybe you caught a fleeting glimpse of the Dateline Time Capsule in those heady minutes before West Wing. Or maybe you've seen Dateline blow up an automobile. I don't know.

But have you ever taken the time to watch nearly a week's worth of Dateline NBC? Have you taken a break from your busy schedule of mockery and derision to study the Dateline oeuvre in depth, to stick your mitts in the very pith and marrow of NBC's ubiquitous prime-time newsmagazine. Have you ever asked yourself, "Hey, what makes Stone Phillips tick?" or "What drives Jane Pauley to do what she does?" or even "What's the deal with Maria Shriver's jawbone? Is she one of those replicants from a future time and place?"

Well, no need to bother, sport. I just spent a week learning all that I can about Dateline and its special brand of reportage. And let me tell you, I think we all owe the good men and women of Dateline an apology for our cruel and arbitrary first impressions.

DATELINE MONDAY

I wasn't sure what to expect as I began my week-long odyssey into the wilds of Dateline. Like so many others, I had taken my shots at the Dateline crowd. I had enjoyed more than a few unkind chuckles at the expense of Stone Phillips, his choice in suits, even his hairdo. But now, with nothing but Dateline to sate my thirst for news, would the tables be turned? What affect would my first full exposure of Dateline have on my cynical, jaded nature?

Like a sucker punch straight to the gut, as it turns out. From the moment Stone Phillips and Jane Pauley welcomed me to their New York studio, Dateline NBC had its hooks in me with a story that must have hit home with every viewer tuned in that night.

It seems that a Marine Staff Sergeant, stationed in Japan, was accused of sexually assaulting the daughter of a fellow Marine. Despite the accusation, the Marine Corps takes no action against the Staff Sergeant, instead transferring him to Arizona. Once there, he again faced allegations of drugging and raping the daughter of another Marine, and this time, it looked as if the Staff Sergeant was going to trial -- until he turned up charred to a crisp in the Las Vegas desert. Or did he? Years later, a man arrested in Utah for alleged sexual assault matched the description of the dead Staff Sergeant. Turns out he faked his own death -- with the unwitting help of a drifter whose body he set on fire -- to avoid a trial. And it seemed like justice had finally caught up with our villainous Staff Sergeant... until he hung himself in his jail cell, thus bringing our Dateline NBC story to a close.

Indeed, a story that rings true for the millions of us who've ever felt the scourge of renegade Marine Staff Sergeants who prey on society's innocents.

You would think that a story like that would tell itself. That all Dateline NBC would have to do is unleash leathery reporter Keith Morrison on the scene to ferret out the truth, with piercing, well-researched questions like "What was it like when your daughter told you she had been raped?" before throwing it back to Stone in the studio for a pithy wrap-up.

You would be wrong. Because the special touch of Dateline NBC -- indeed, part of the show's very genius -- comes when it adds stirring sound effects and visual tricks. Keith Morrison reports that the Staff Sergeant has drugged a victim? The camera gets all blurry and starts to lurch down a hallway. The Staff Sergeant is finally arrested? We're treated to stock footage of a prison door slamming shut with a reverberating clang. It's dramatic touches like these, I've discovered, that make a Dateline NBC story as gripping as anything on, say, Law & Order or Law & Order: SVU. Only here, the stories are true. Mostly. Hopefully.

Only one thing troubled me, as I sat there riveted to my TV following the twists and turns of this precedent-setting criminal case. A few years ago -- 1998 I want to say -- I visited my fellow Vidiot, Pete Ko, at his palatial Las Vegas estate. And I remembering reading the Las Vegas Review-Journal -- a fine news source, though nothing compared to Dateline NBC -- and coming across this very story.

It seemed odd that Dateline NBC would breathlessly report a story I had read about at least two years ago as if it were still unfolding. That's not the kind of broadcast journalism I associate with the Dateline imprimatur, with the icy, cool professionals of Keith Morrison, with the awesome news-gathering abilities of Stone Phillips.

Then it hit me. Dateline NBC has a large chunk of programming to fill up each week. Finding enough top-shelf material for five nights of Dateline is hard, labor-intensive work. Every now and again, even a story as important as the Marine Staff Sergeant who faked his own death will slip through the cracks.

Plus, it takes a long time to add all that stock footage.

DATELINE TUESDAY

With my newfound appreciation for Dateline in place, I couldn't wait for Tuesday night's installment. What important pieces of investigative journalism would Stone and the boys be able to cook up in a scant 24 hours for me and the rest of the massive Dateline audience? A piece on some sort of sordid crime? A feature on a revolutionary weight-loss program? An exposé on a revolutionary weight-loss program that led to some sort of sordid crime?

Something a lot more hard-hitting, as it turns out. Dateline served up an alarming investigative report on a young lad who went to the doctor's office for a normal outpatient surgical procedure and left as a corpse when the anesthesia failed to agree with him.

"What you may not know," the Dateline correspondent intoned in his most grave baritone, "is that in most states, there are no laws that require doctors' offices to have the same safety procedures as hospitals."

Good God. If the newshounds at Dateline NBC are correct -- and apart from that exploding truck thing, they've given me no reason to doubt their trustworthiness as journalists -- then I'm playing with fire the next time I go in for a routine outpatient procedure at a doctor's office that happens to be in one of those states with lax safety requirements.

Sweet Mother Mary in heaven, no!

My interest piqued, I was all set to pay extra special attention to this life-saving report. Indeed, Dateline promised to spell out exactly what I needed to look out for the next time I went under the knife, lest I wind up another statistic in the TV newsmagazine's grisly parade of death.

Only it was right then that the girlfriend demanded I turn off the TV and pay attention to her.

Oh, I protested. I tried pointing out that here was news we could use. I even made a mental note to keep a close eye on the girlfriend from now on. She starts urging me to go in to the doctor's to get that mole removed, and I know she's trouble.

Still, I turned off the TV. She's awfully pretty.

To be continued...

But my affliction does have its advantages. Celebrity deficit disorder puts me in a unique position to watch with a detached eye a sinister attempt to revive a blatantly destructive corporate program for the brainwashing of America.

Thus, it was with a peculiar -- and perhaps not entirely perplexed -- sense of deja vu that I first saw Chicago Cubs star Sammy Sosa flacking the atavistic Pepsi Challenge.

Of course, Sosa was just a pup when the Pepsi Challenge was first unleashed upon the public more than two decades ago. But even with my tenuous connection to the idiot box, I could see the old Coke vs. Pepsi battle royale was set to come storming back. It is the Rheinland invasion of the Cola Wars.

It says something about the intensity of Pepsi's carpet bombing campaign that I could remember the old challenge and its importance to the history of commercial TV.

Back in the 1970s, Pepsi's ad wizards managed to penetrate the hide of this pop culture ankylosaurus and inject it with the corn-fructose-based virus of Madison Avenue propaganda.

My finely tuned temple of Greek Philosophy and Roman Discipline had been breached and I still remember the barbarian's message.

Or to put in the parlance of the communications-studies trade: the Corporate Hegemony had succeeded in my commodification.

How could this happen?

Somewhere at some time, Pepsi Co. sent a 30-second guided missile into my Spartan regimen of Baa, Baa, Blacksheep and Battlestar Galactica.

No doubt, even then, all I could say was "frak."

Now after 20 years, some slack ass at the ad firm handling the Pepsi account decided to bring back the WCW Nitro Goldberg variation of the classic Manichaean struggle of America's cola drinks.

That's public education for you. Creative writing, my ass.

Sure, the women may no longer sport Farrah Fawcett hairdos and most men don't look like dirty-dirty hippie freaks anymore, but the essential format is the same.

Some guy (in this case, a big little boy who swings wood for a living in the world's second most boring game) "challenges" your average sidewalk-patrolling poltroon to stop and try a sip of Coke and a sip of Pepsi and tell the camera which one is better.

Idiots.

I'm no professional statistician. I don't work in the hard sciences. But I do know when an informal logical error will affect the final results. And here it is.

Asking your average American for a chance to go on TV is an invitation to pander that few subjects of the Cathode Hypno-Beam could pass up.

They want a piece of the celebrity pie.

Only after our hero, Sammy, raises the cups like some Puerto Rican deus ex machina do we see the hard work of the American psychos of Young & Rubicam pay off.

We are confronted with the improbable: Pepsi wins! The now-refreshed moron also acts surprised when he or she discovers that in this blind taste test, the underdog won.

Now, it must be the secret desire of these shambling ground sloths masquerading as Homo Sapiens to so value a 30-second deposit on their 15 minutes of fame that they will act as though they really can't tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi.

Of course they can tell the difference. Everyone knows that Coke is superior to Pepsi in every way, just as everyone knows the works of Chrysippus the Stoic far outstrip the work of Anaximenes of Miletus.

So where do these actors come from? Have they no tongues? No, they can speak -- in disbelief as their Coke Weltanschauung collapses like so many "very special episodes" of Webster.

Perhaps, we ponder, their taste buds were rendered useless after their venture on the casting couch. Or maybe this is just another put-on, like something rigged by Don King, pro wrestling, or New Hampshire's primaries.

The quest for celebrity is the only thing that can explain why anyone would claim Pepsi is better than Coke. The Pepsi challenge is a game designed by parasites in the free market. Pepsi is piggybacking on Coke sales in the vain hope that weak-willed simps will change their views for the smile of a baseball lunk and the glint of the camera.

I want a new challenge. A chance for these numbnuts to try another blind contest. I call it the Battery Acid Challenge. Two cups. Two substances. A Kenwood special reserve Cabernet Sauvignon in one glass. A 3 oz. sampling of AC Delco battery acid in the other.

Most people think wine is better. But can they tell the difference in front of the camera? The results will surprise you. Nine times out of ten, the desire to get on national TV will easily overcome the agony of one's tongue and esophagus burning away. Better to smile and lie and gasp for joy over the steaming burn of an AC Delco 12-volt chaser.

Just so they can get on TV.

Now, if I can just get a big celebrity to lead the challenge. Somebody like Bob Uecker or Suzanne Pleshette.

As an homage to Playboy, Bill Maher has a week of PI being filmed at the Playboy Mansion. This is not just a nod to Playboy, but also to the old, almost forgotten television show Playboy After Dark. And seeing Bill in a tuxedo rubbing shoulders with Bif Naked at a Playboy buffet table, I was reminded of After Dark, and my encounter with it, and how, even though Bill means well, all he's managing to do is underscore just how weak and silly his show is by comparison.

At some point my father wandered into the bedroom he shares with my mother and never came out. He put a TV in there, and a phone, and a clock radio, and a VCR, and a Craftmatic Adjustable Bed, and got Mom to bring him Cheez-Its, and now he just stays there, watching TV or sleeping, all the time. When I visit him I lie down in the bed next to him, on my mother's side, and we talk. Sometimes he's watching TV and we joke about whatever he's got on.

During one such visit he stopped at the Playboy channel. A small panic crept into my heart. I have no desire to look at bouncy funbags with my father in the room. He did his very best to look upon any and every of my adolescent excursions into sexual material with great disdain and scorn. He has therefore inculcated in me an intense desire to pretend that sex does not exist, in any form, anywhere, when he is around. Even if most of my early excursions were into his extensive Playboy collection.

There we were, watching the Playboy channel, me through my internal wince. But the show was not one of Playboy's sex shows. It was a rerun of Playboy After Dark.

I had never even heard of this show. What was it? My father explained it to me. After Dark was a TV show that ran in the late '60s. It ran on network TV, if you can imagine anything with the name "Playboy" in it running on a network. But it wasn't about naked women -- it was a show about class, and art, and good living, and elegance. It was, in short, a cool show, a hip show.

I sat back and watched. And was transported to another planet.

The show looked thoroughly modern. It did so, not because of the styles or hairdos, but because the film stock was in perfect condition. Children of my generation have become convinced that the '60s and '70s were grainy, drained of color, fuzzy-sounding decades, because our only media contact with them is through moldering magazines and TV show repeats and late-night movies which have been through the ringer so many times they look like they were filmed with Thomas Edison's personal camera. After Dark did not have a successful run in syndication, did not grace the airwaves on channel 11 every weeknight at midnight where it would be trimmed by fifteen minutes to fit in more commercials. It did not get copied and distributed to every two-bit broadcaster in the land looking for something cheap to run in the days before infomercials. No: Playboy After Dark sat in a can somewhere, on a shelf, in perfect, pristine, bright, clear, flawless condition. So what I was viewing was straight out of another time without the scratchy translation of poor, cheap, elderly film stock.

The camera moved lazily across a room where a party was going on. A party unlike any party I had ever seen, on film or otherwise. People chatted in small groups. Everyone had a drink in their hand. Blacks and whites mingled freely. Almost everyone was smoking. Quiet jazz filled the room. Everyone was dressed stylishly and with care. Everyone looked attractive in a comfortable way. No one looked like a model -- the guests all just looked like handsome, pleasant people. The light was soft, yellowish, and diffuse.

The camera wandered past the guests, stopping here and there and catching fragments of their conversation. The camera rolled along very slowly. Amazingly slowly. Eventually it made its way to a couch. At one end of the couch was Hugh Hefner, smoking. At the other end of the couch was George Carlin. A very, very young George Carlin.

"Hey, George," said Hef, "Would you do a bit for us?"

"Sure," said George, and he stood up and began one of his classic routines -- only, of course, at the time, the routine was new. The guests quieted down politely and turned to see what George was doing. They laughed when they were supposed to, nodded appreciatively, and otherwise enjoyed the performace.

When he was done, Hef thanked George, and everyone clapped, and George sat down to chat with Hef as the party continued.

Later in the show, the camera panned along and encountered a band. They were playing jazz. Gradually, as the camera didn't move, it became apparent that this was a featured band, performing for the show.

And all of After Dark was like this. Long, languorous camera shots, lingering on details, while an incredibly civilized party went on, with everyone drinking and smoking and grooving to the music. And occasionally one of the guests would turn out to be someone with a talent, who would graciously agree to share some of it with us.

These transmissions might as well have been from another planet as far as I was concerned. A planet without herky-jerk camera movement, without the need to cut to some new scene every fifteen seconds, without intrusive and loud commercials, without screaming, shouting, mugging, ugliness, dirt, stupidity, cupidity, or crudity. In short, a planet without MTV.

Then my father let me in on the secret: Playboy was never just about naked women. It was about a lifestyle. A certain philosophy. If I'd ever read the articles, I'd know that. Playboy was about being a cultured, sophisticated human being. The ideal Playboy man knew how to order drinks, mix drinks, drive a nice car, choose the right leather jacket, tie a real bow tie on his tuxedo, arrange his stereo equipment for optimal sound, pick out the right Wayne Shorter record for the occasion, enjoy a cigar, appreciate the weave of a fine wool suit, and please a woman, even as she might please him by being beautiful, and intelligent, and capable of discussing the politics of abortion or gun ownership or racism, all topics frequently covered in the magazine. The Playboy man read Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal and R. Buckminster Fuller. The Playboy philosophy was about living the Good Life, the Good Life including good food, good clothes, good music, and, of course, good sex. And also it was about allowing everyone else to lead their Good Life -- it was about tolerance.

Like I said, transmissions from another planet. Lying there in my parents' bed I thought about the world I lived in, with its complete and utter lack of elegance. I owned one tuxedo, a cheap polyester one, to wear onstage with the decidedly uncool Glee Club. Stereos weren't good, they were loud. Music wasn't cool, it was rockin'. People wore their clothes with holes in them, and grew their hair long, and listened to Metallica. And out in Seattle some guys were putting on flannel shirts and throwing out their Mel Bay Guitar Method books in favor of just flailing away at the strings -- and the radio was playing them.

And on TV elegance had vanished, too. Music performances were relegated to Saturday Night Live and occasional appearances on talk shows, where talking had been replaced by joke-telling and back-patting interspersed with low-brow comedy bits. The only place to find music with any regularity was MTV, where short attention spans and new digital editing consoles had led to a jump-cut, buzzed-out, hand-held universe of brain-battering montage.

There was no room on TV those days for a program like Playboy After Dark. Too many 18-24 year-old viewers would have gotten bored in the first ten seconds, or laughed themselves silly at the afros, and then changed the channel to see what Married... with Children -- the epitome of inelegance -- was up to.

I sat there on the bed that night and mourned the loss. My loss, your loss -- everyone's loss of a world where everything was neat and clean and pleasant and comfortable and hi-fi and stately.

So here is Bill Maher trying to recapture some of that essence. While I can applaud his attempt, I can also lament, because his efforts only show how far we've come from those bygone days when TV could show the same thing for more than a femtosecond before feeling the need to move lest the viewer grow restless. Bill and his guests -- who in terms of intelligent conversation not only cannot hold a candle to the guests of After Dark, but can't even get their candle lit with a road flare -- stand next to a buffet table while a party goes on, unnoticed and only barely visible, behind them. It is clear they're at a party, but also that they're hogging the food -- not that they eat. Bill's guests are dressed fairly shabbily -- well, what would you expect from a woman who calls herself Bif Naked? -- even though Bill himself is in a tuxedo. I get the feeling, though, that someone else tied his tie for him.

Clearly the director isn't sure of what to do to make this situation interesting. No one can move, so all the variety is provided by having the view switch back and forth between close-ups of the guest's faces. Rapidly. And nobody gets to say anything interesting, either, because someone else is always interrupting, or else it's time for a commercial; and, given that PI is a half-hour show, after commercials and Bill Maher's monologue there's only about two minutes each for the four guests to get a word in, said word being, "But," right before Bill interrupts them to throw to break.

This is all well and good because when the guests do get to say something, it is almost invariably stupid. They make Maher look smart, and, let's face it, in the knife drawer that is life, Bill Maher is the wire whisk.

It's sad, really. Bill Maher watched Playboy After Dark, and he wants to pay homage to it, but he knows the words and not the music. If he really lived the Playboy philosophy, he'd know both -- and how to tie his own tie, too.

Terrible.

Here at TeeVee, we're all about eternal vigilance. By keeping close tabs on the powers that be, we hope to spare you, the American public, the untold misery of watching the televised equivalent of Rum Tum Tugger gadding about to Andrew Lloyd Webber songs and frightening the children. That helps to explain the rationale behind pieces like Gregg Wrenn's hard-hitting look at reality TV and how it can all be blamed on the execrable The Real World.

But in his otherwise thorough piece, my colleague Wrenn missed The Real World's greatest sin -- more awful than the host of knock-offs and dreary porno movies it has inspired, more dreadful an act than locking seven sociopaths in the same apartment and turning on the camera, more unpleasant than unleashing Puck upon a weary nation. I'm talking about the number of The Real World cast members who have made this soul-draining show the crux of their existence.

Forget the cast members who have gone on to appear in Road Rules or "The Real World Reunion" or whatever bilge MTV passes their way. I'm not even that upset about the lunkhead cast member who wrote a book about his time on The Real World or the other lunkhead cast member who went on to get a job with the production company that puts out the show.

No, what has me fearing for humanity's future is the alarming news that two people who appeared in separate installments of The Real World have met, fallen in love, married and sired an offspring.

Don't get me wrong. I don't begrudge the happy couple and their child any moment of happiness or a full, rich life together -- provided it's lived nowhere in the vicinity of my TV. Rather, the frightening development is what could happen should more cast members of The Real World join together in wedded bliss.

Because right now, a light bulb has formed over the noggins of unscrupulous forces within the Bunim-Murray empire. They see two of their cast members producing a new generation of hardy souls for The Real World XXV: Biloxi and think, "Hey... why don't we do that with all our cast members?" They'll build a compound out there, somewhere north of Fort Peck, Montana on the edge of the Saskatchewan border, where all cast members of The Real World will be forced to live and breed with one another -- even the gay ones. And within a few years, Bunim-Murray will have a small army of cast members to lay siege to the nation's airwaves.

Everywhere you turn, there'll be cast members of The Real World clogging up casting directors' offices and inking pilot deals and taking lunches with Mike Ovitz. We'll be six-deep with The Real World-inspired shows. Sitcoms in which cast members will get into wacky predicaments because of their crazy get-rich-quick schemes. Cop shows where seven strangers are brought together to live in one house and solve crimes. Sunday morning talks shows paneled by The Real World cast where they'll discuss important issues of the day like gun control and Social Security reform and what a bitch Ruthie is for not taking out the garbage.

And MTV... Oh Christ, how the music-television network will be lousy with The Real World cast members. The Los Angeles cast can replace Carson Daly as the host of Total Request Live. The Boston cast can be in charge of Kurt Loder, mashing up his food and changing his soiled garments and making sure the aged hipster doesn't shatter his hip getting out of bed each day. MTV can bring Singled Out back, having the Hawaii cast compete for dates with the folks from The Real World: London. And of course, every member of The Real World and Road Rules and "The Real World Meets Road Rules" will serve as VeeJays, introducing music videos and...

Wait a minute. What am I saying? This scenario is ridiculous. MTV doesn't air music videos anymore.

Never mind.

For instance, combine America's love of its legal system with the undeniable appeal of a shallow, hallucinating, anorexic bimbo. That's television gold, baby!

Another example: Take poorly-shot footage of guys getting whacked in the 'nads with assorted blunt objects, mix in the zany voice-over stylings of beloved comic Bob Saget, and what have you got? A 30-share Nielsen Cocktail, that's what!

I myself have often fantasized about a show uniting the talents of Vic Tayback and Norman Fell with that venerable sitcom staple, the incompatible roommate scenario. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, apart from that every episode would feature product placement for Fruit of the Loom and a running gag about a low-flow toilet.

Of course, given that both actors are dead, it seems unlikely that my dream will ever come true. Nonetheless, I'm fairly sure that you could put the urn that contains Vic's ashes on an apartment set with Norman's putrefied corpse, and the resulting show would still be funnier than Battery Park (also, thankfully, deceased).

It should come as no surprise, then, that Fox's Tuesday Night offering, "Battle of the Child Geniuses", strove to intermingle two of today's biggest viewer draws: insipid primetime game shows and public humiliation of children. No doubt the show's creators were inspired by other recent ratings bonanzas such as public humiliation of children combined with Denver blue-blood society murder, and public humiliation of children combined with Cuban foreign policy -- although some of the credit for that one has to go to the added presence of time-tested crowd pleaser Janet Reno.

Anyway, here's the basic idea behind "Child Geniuses." Start with a gaggle of weak and sickly youngsters whose only source of self-esteem is their relatively high intelligence quotients. Then, run them through a gauntlet of fairly strenuous academic questions until all but one suffer ignominious defeat. The winner receives a cornucopia of cash, savings bonds, and prizes, along with the honorary title of "Smartest Kid in America". Within a year's time, he probably will also receive the honorary title of "Kid with America's Most Frequently Kicked Ass".

The losers, of course, go home without their only source of self-esteem, but with some lovely parting gifts. Notable among the consolation prizes: the lucky semi-finalists all get to enjoy a weeklong cruise with the over-pressuring family they just disappointed.

Fox's Web site blurb about Child Geniuses proudly proclaims, "Harder than any SAT test, these college-level questions would leave most adults crying for their mommies!" It's a good thing, then, that Fox isn't posing said questions to weak-kneed adults, but to self-confident elementary school students, whose rock-solid psyches will no doubt withstand the scrutiny of millions.

The kids' emotional toughness was in no better evidence than during the final round, in which the two finalists were forced to stand on a bare stage under hot Klieg lights and answer difficult questions with potentially painful consequences. Quite like a criminal interrogation, except that most criminals are fortunate enough not to have to gaze upon the pompous plastic visage of Dick Clark in the process. (Federal law prohibits it.) Nonetheless, one of the young finalists was so totally in control that his conspicuous facial tic, which gradually escalated in severity throughout the final round, was barely noticeable beside his competitor's self-assured grimace of constipation.

So why in god's name would anybody want to watch such a thing? I'm guessing its the same driving force that sucks folks into Regis' twisted little quiz world three to six nights a week. That is, the smug self-satisfaction of knowing some tidbit of information that a journeyman plumber from Duluth does not. Or, in this case, a friendless pre-pubescent math nerd from Reseda. Truth is, most of the enjoyment we get from watching shows like Millionaire comes from the personal validation of seeing others fail. I'm convinced that this is also why UPN stubbornly continues to exist.

If it can be said to have one, the saving grace of "Child Geniuses" was that it seemed determined not to give viewers that satisfaction. Although all contestants were under twelve, the questions, which spanned the fields of math, vocabulary, spelling, and science, were surprisingly complex. More often than not the child geniuses nailed them. Sometimes the child geniuses nailed them, and I didn't. This made me bitter. I began to resent the child geniuses. "Why," I thought, "do the child geniuses not recognize my need to feel superior to them?"

Suddenly I wanted to see the arrogant little brats suffer. No therapy-inducing trauma was too horrible. I began to devise a game show of my own, in which the child geniuses would be doubly humiliated by being presented with a sequence of questions they couldn't possible answer. The categories would include:

• Social Interaction

• Games and Other Fun Activities

• Styling Implements, Not Including Scissors and a Bowl

• The Great Outdoors

• and, of course, Television

Actually, I felt kind of bad about it later.

And there's where the beauty of Fox's little mélange shines through. I came for the insipid game show. I stayed for the public humiliation. And the lingering pangs of guilt ensure that, as with all of my guilt-inducing vices, I will return for a future installment.

Now that's genius.

Your life is boring. Congratulations. Wanna be on TV?

Network television executives, the same ones that felt the urgent need to publicly display that "The '70s" miniseries, have decided that ordinary people are the stars of the future. Three new shows revolve around everyday people living their everyday lives in front of TV cameras. Voyeurism is here to stay.

This all started a few years ago with the intestinal parasite of television, The Real World. Just like a real tapeworm, it snuck into MTV's schedule unnoticed and settled into the gut of the lineup. Fulfilling its parasitic destiny, The Real World clamped onto a soft, fleshy time slot and wouldn't let go, voraciously devouring time that should have been spent on actual music while spewing out offspring like Road Rules, "Real World Reunion," "Real World-Road Rules Challenge," "The Real World Casting Special," etc.

You know how the medical profession kills intestinal worms? Poison. Pump the patient full of noxious toxins and hope that they kill the parasite faster than they kill the host.

That doesn't really have anything to do with my Real World-as-tapeworm metaphor, but it would make for a really cool episode.

Now there are more voyeur shows on the way. CBS' Survivor is The Real World on a deserted tropical island. I'll wager my first born that this particular desert island will have the world's largest per-capita density of bikinis and Speedos. Big Brother, also on CBS, is The Real World in a house... um, The Real World in a city... no, wait, that's not it either. Just what the hell is Big Brother's hook? Oh yes, Big Brother is The Real World with microphones in the can.

Way to push the artistic envelope, CBS!

There was a German version of Big Brother which was recently banned for being in dubious taste. This from a country that gave the world Siegfried and Roy. How bad must this show be?

ABC is jumping on the bandwagon with a show about a startup webzine and the journalists behind it. Now I don't know what you think life at a high-powered webzine like TeeVee is like, but believe me, it's not all helicopter rides and blowing stock options on leopard skin seat covers for the new Ferrari.

Putting a camera in the vast expanse of the TeeVee corporate campus probably isn't a great idea. Sure, while you'd see myself hard at work, completely focused on producing top-notch comedy, the rest of the other Vidiots might not come off as overwhelmingly dedicated.

Look over there! There are Collier and Michaels arguing over who charged a six-month subscription to FancyFunbags.com on the company credit card. Over in the corner office, Rywalt and Schmeiser are taking hits off the bottle of ether Chris swiped during his recent hospital stay. Down in Ops, Snell and Knauss, plastic lightsabers in hand, are challenging each other to a Perl vs. AppleScript deathmatch. Up on the fifth floor, a trademark string of Boychuk invectives reduces yet another intern to tears.

Maybe you'll get lucky and catch a quick glimpse of Ko, one of the most popular Vidiots before the release of his Manifesto and subsequent withdrawal to Utility Closet 184B. Sometimes we see him scurrying about under the light of the full moon, scouring the room for day old crullers.

Come to think of it, TeeVee would make a hell of a show.

Chances are, though, ABC will not be showcasing us. So they're stuck with the uninteresting lives of cynical, drunken blowhards that populate all the other webzines. Plus, as those of you that have worked at a newspaper know all to well, the only reason print journalists are print journalists is that they're too ugly to be on television.

That's two strikes against ABC, but then again, the success of The Real World has me befuddled. I don't know these people, you don't know these people, why the hell do you care what happens to them? Do you regularly approach strangers in the produce aisle and ask if they hate their roommate or enjoy country music? Didn't think so. Then why do you care when people on TV hate their roommates or enjoy country music?

It's not like The Real World is actually the real world. It's a basic-cable soap opera from producers too cheap to hire writers, with a buffoonish collection of stars that are barely even untalented improv actors. The whole show is just one very bizarre episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? without the studio audience.

Back in school a couple of years ago I unknowingly shared a class with Cori of Real World San Francisco fame. We talked a few times and she seemed like a perfectly normal college student, one who never mentioned she was fresh off the show. After another classmate told me who she was, I managed to sit through almost 45 minutes of the show. Cori cried approximately 27 times.

She had never broken down in class, not once. No sobbing over the midterm, no blubbering at the mention of the term paper. She even managed at least three conversations with myself without bursting into tears, a feat which, sadly, few women are capable of.

Yet there she was on TV, singlehandedly sending the good people at the Kleenex company into crisis production levels not seen since the video release of "Ol' Yeller." The next day I said something like "You sure cry a lot."

She never spoke to me again. However, the question still haunts me: why the constant waterworks? Did someone spike her food? Were her shoes too tight? Or did the producers simply tell her "You're the hyper-sensitive, over-emotional crybaby?"

For those of you that missed it last weekend, "The Real World Reunion Special Two" dominated MTV airtime. Guess what? The cast members are still whining, self-absorbed, one-dimensional, untalented hacks who, if there were any justice in the world, would be vinyl siding telemarketers struggling to meet their Sioux City quotas.

Wait, I take that back. One of them is in medical school. Another one has Lyme disease. That's pretty much the pinnacle the Real World alumnus achievements. Except for Janet. She's a hottie.

Since no one ever listens to me, the prospects for future voyeur shows seem very bright indeed. Just go ahead, then. Take your alcoholic nudist lesbians and philandering backwoods hicks and tune in every week to see them living their lives. But I've had enough of the real world. The Friends world is the one I want to live in.

TeeVee: Hello, Jesus?

Jesus Christ: Yes, hello?

TeeVee: Whassup?!

JC: Please don't do that. It's so five minutes ago.

TeeVee: Sorry. Can you explain your recent resurgence in TV-movie popularity? It's been quite a while since the last network epic about you, 1977's "Jesus of Nazareth" -- why the sudden interest in Christ?

JC: Everyone is asking me that on this press junket, and I've yet to come up with an answer. As long as the audience is there, who am I to question it? [Laughs] OK, I am Jesus Christ, but really, I'm just happy to be back on the networks -- Pax is a fine little Christian cable outlet, but no one can expand their sales-base between Matlock reruns. Not even me.

TeeVee: You worked as an uncredited consultant on CBS' Jesus, so you're obviously close to the project -- what did you think of NBC's "Mary, Mother of Jesus" and ABC's "The Miracle Maker"?

JC: I'd rather not disparage any other productions, because at least they made the effort, instead of just cranking out another damned -- and I do mean damned -- game show. However, it is kind of disconcerting to have the actor who portrayed you [Christian Bale in "Mary"] go on to star in "American Psycho," you know? It's even stranger to see yourself in claymation -- "The Miracle Maker" had that whole Davey & Goliath retro-vibe going for it, so it tested well with the Boomer demographic.

TeeVee: So you follow the market research behind your projects?

JC: I follow everything, remember?

TeeVee: My bad. "The Miracle Maker" also angered many Christians by animating you as short, plain and dark-skinned, instead of the standard -- albeit, probably incorrect -- tall, handsome and blond. In "Jesus," you're again more Joe Surfer than Jewish -- which is the right look?

JC: Since every religion and continent has its own engrained vision of me, despite that whole "graven image" thing -- which apparently no one pays attention to -- revealing the real Jesus would be confusing and, frankly, pointless. Kind of like the "Quarter Pounder/Royale with Cheese" argument from "Pulp Fiction." Different strokes, people.

TeeVee: Getting back to "Jesus," Jesus, how do you like the cast of this latest mini-series?

JC: Jeremy Sisto has me down quite well, but I could still show him a few dance moves. Debra Messing [Mary Magdalene], of Will & Grace, was a panic on the set! Funny lady -- we were doing "Just Jesus!" [a la Will & Grace's "Just Jack!" gag] constantly, cracking up the crew. Too bad she's Jewish, but what are you gonna do? [Laughs] I kid, of course.

TeeVee: Since I'm calling from Salt Lake City, what's your take on the Mormons?

JC: Mormons? Hmmm... No, sorry. I'm not familiar with their work.

TeeVee: You're a cartoon regular on South Park, hosting your own cable-access TV talk show -- would you ever consider hosting one for real?

JC: Why? Did Letterman finally kick? [Laughs] Seriously, it takes real God-given talent to do that, or a deal with Satan. Not to cast any doubt upon the skills of Larry King, but he's not in my Rolodex, if you know what I mean.

TeeVee: Should Jesus do well in the ratings, do you foresee a sequel? Or even a regular series?

JC: They'll have to do it without my input if that happens; I'm committed to a development deal with DreamWorks. Right now, I'm working on a feel-good show about a vaguely sexy Irish angel who helps save souls and drinks mocha lattés -- oh, and she also kicks butt on a roller-derby team.

TeeVee: Uh, isn't that just Touched by an Angel, with a bit of RollerJam?

JC: Look, who's the Messiah here? Besides, I'm certainly not going to rip off a hugely popular show just because I can, being Christ and all. [Call-waiting clicks] Sorry, I've got to take this... [click] Yes, hello?

Roma Downey: Whassup?!

JC: Whassup?!

The virus, named after Time Of Your Life star Jennifer Love Hewitt, activates when recipients open an attachment to their e-mail with the subject line, "JenniferLovesYou." The bug then infects files on users' hard drives with an MP3-file of the actress singing You Light Up My Life.

"It was horrible," said Lillian Bancroft, a Salem, Ore., IT administrator. "Bad enough that our entire network of computers crashed because of this virus. But now I have Jennifer Love Hewitt's horrible screeching stuck in my brain. For God's sake, she can't even carry a tune."

The effects of the Love virus were felt far beyond the tech world. In Tempe, Ariz., an entire office park had to be evacuated and 17 workers hospitalized when an entire bank of computers began playing the Jennifer Love Hewitt song at full volume.

"Most of them were bleeding from the ears," said Tempe police spokesman Larry Osbert. "But a few were shaken pretty badly. One guy just kept screaming, 'You light up my days, and fill my nights with song.' Over and over again.

"It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen," Osbert added. "And I've been to 'Nam."

At first, computer security experts feared the virus was a new strain of the dreaded "Love" Bug, a glitch that infected computers worldwide with the ghostly voices of Dean Jones and Buddy Hackett. But experts concluded the virus was the work of Hewitt after noting the bug's telltale "perky disposition, infectious enthusiasm and gravity-defying hooters."

Experts are baffled as to why Jennifer Love Hewitt would attempt to cripple the Internet's infrastructure. But sources close to the temperamental star say it fits in with a pattern of crimes that began ever since "Can't Hardly Wait" failed to strike it big at the box office.

"Don't let her sunny disposition fool you," former Party of Five co-star Scott Wolf said. "Jennifer is a whiz with the computers, an experienced hacker and a cold-blooded criminal genius. Plus, she once made Lacey Chabert cry."

Authorities have begun a 12-state man-hunt for Hewitt, who has not been heard from since Time Of Your Life debuted last fall.

This is the second time in less than a year that a computer virus has forced computer networks across the world to shut down. Six months ago, the Melissa virus -- generated by Sabrina The Teenage Witch's Melissa Joan Hart -- crippled hard drives across the country. That glitch also spread via e-mail, before breaking into encrypted files and forcing your computer to hire members of Melissa Joan Hart's family.

Experts fear systems attacks like the Love and Melissa viruses are only the beginning. "Today's young actors have unprecedented wealth, fame and programming skills," said Dr. Christoper Gessel, a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist. "It's not unreasonable to believe that in between shooting episodes of their popular WB shows and filming various sequels to 'Scream' and 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' these fabulous-looking young people are sequestered in their basements, assembling intricately designed computer bugs. Isn't it?"

Indeed, authorities say they've been keeping tabs on such young stars as Felicity's Keri Russell, Shasta's Jake Busey and Popular's Leslie Bibb as potential troublemakers.

"Obviously, everyone's innocent until proven guilty, but these kids fit the pattern of master hackers," FBI Special Agent Scott Whitaker said. "Especially that Busey kid. He just looks like trouble."

Just last week, FBI agents seized Dawson's Creek star James Van Der Beek in a daring predawn raid on suspicion that Van Der Beek was developing a computer virus of his own. Van Der Beek's virus reportedly triggered computers to launch into long tangential riffs invoking existentialism, leitmotifs and imagery from assorted Steven Speilberg movies.

"And the shame of it all, is these kids should know better," Whitaker said. "It's not like they're a bunch of no-goodniks like that Diff'rent Strokes crowd."