But our land isn't freeAll this talk of traffic this week. First, the Times comes out with an article about the profligate sex slave trade going on right under our noses. Having read this article, which is rife with unnamed sources, unsubstantiated "statistics," and emphemeral and mysterious locales, my bullshit detector went off. She explained: ''They would call you out of the basement, and you'd get a bath and you'd get a dress, and if your dress was yellow you were probably going to Disneyland.'' She said they used color coding to make transactions safer for the traffickers and the clients. ''At Disneyland there would be people doing drop-offs and pickups for kids. It's a big open area full of kids, and nobody pays attention to nobody. They would kind of quietly say, 'Go over to that person,' and you would just slip your hand into theirs and say, 'I was looking for you, Daddy.' Then that person would move off with one or two or three of us.''Yes, I understand that this is an awful human rights crime and yes, I believe it exists, but to the extent that this article alleges? It waxes awfully hysterical, one part snuff films-do-exist and one part McMartin-preschool-trial. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. I've said it before, but the hardened cynic in me believes that the media likes to talk about (and occasionally even invent) such atrocities (and the public likes to read about them) because it's like porn for the sanctimonious. You know, all the hype is dying down about abuse in the Catholic church, we need more fodder to titillate our righteousness. Ooooh! Soiled panties and toilet roll in underground caves! When (if) I'm proven wrong about the all the hyperbole and the exaggeration, I'll certainly be cowed. And sad. But I'm not holding my breath. Speaking of traffic, I watched the first part of Traffic last night. Or rather, I watched twenty minutes of miniseries and an hour and forty minutes of the same damned commercials over and over again. Someone wake me when Elias Koteas and Martin Donovan make out. Or something. Posted by Dana at 06:42 PM
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I also thought the numbers were kinda on the high side - 20 to 30 times a day, seven days a week? Jesus. Sturdy little girls, these are.
There's another followup from Slate.
(BTW, you need Tivo)
Posted by: keepyrdistance at January 27, 2004 10:39 PMI agree with you about this subject (yes it happens, but not in the numbers cited in the article), I couldn't help but see a similarity to the hysteria about ritual satanic abuse that went on during the 80's. People like Geraldo were doing prime-time specials on it, speaking to people who believed that over 50,000 babies a year were being ritually slaughtered in the US alone. It seems like this sort of thing crops up every now and again.
Posted by: rasputin at January 28, 2004 08:19 AMI dunno. Call me sanctimonius, but the numbers and motivations don't neccessarily bother me all that much. Even a little of this shit is too much.
Posted by: jonmc at January 28, 2004 10:23 AMEven a little bit of satanic ritual cult murder is too much. But making up wild unsubstantiated nonsense on the subject *hurts* the cause of investigating and stopping the real thing.
Is anybody in this witch hunt talking about the alleged hot spot for underage prostitution which was the former Yugoslavia, including US-occupied Kosovo? There were some stories in the press about American soldiers and civilians involved in trafficking but I don't know whether they were plausible or not.
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle at February 8, 2004 06:47 PM