Amid all the hot new shows on network TV this fall, the one that has me completely addicted is Dateline NBC's 'To Catch A Predator' series.

Chris Hansen oversees a Dateline staple that apparently outdraws "The Office" 2-to-1. He leads a Friday night assault of humiliation upon men who have decided to meet up with teenage girls and boys at houses that have been rigged across the country with cameras and microphones for the purpose of recording online-predator sting operations.

These men -- the stars of this show if you will -- think they're meeting up with teens with whom they've been chatting only to realize they've ruined their freaking lives.

"Do you know who I am? I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, and we're doing a story on online predators ..."

Truckers, teachers, soldiers, doctors, lawyers (rabbis even) plead their cases with Hansen, saying their intentions were innocent. They only planned to befriend 14-year-old Amy or 13-year-old Alex.

Whatever.

Some beg. Others even cry. However, it all ends the same when they're arrested by gun-wielding officers outside the set. The stars of our hit show are legally bound and charged with actual crimes for their trouble.

What makes us watch essentially the same scene play out over and over and over? I'm absolutely fascinated by the show; however, I have significant ethical concerns regarding the means to this end. I have concerns that it's mega-bad karma to watch this show.

First, I would submit that while online predators are bad people, they're not nearly as bad as the white-collar criminals from Enron. They're not as bad as people who kill other people with guns, knives, baseball bats, etc. They're not as bad in my book as somebody who beats his wife. They're not close to as bad as any world leader who would send kids to die in an unjust war.

They're just not. Sorry. Forgive me if I don't worship children.

But, online predators are bad, very bad. There is still a pecking order in the world of shitheads, though, in my book at least, and we don't humiliate them the way this show does these online predators.

Second, I am a big believer in due process, that notion held in our 14th Amendment that suggests that everybody, good or bad, gets his or her day in court without a presumption of guilt and certainly without the slow public torture that is 'To Catch A Predator.'

Each of the alleged predators who shows up on this Dateline NBC show, which airs next at 8 p.m. Friday, by the way, is essentially presumed guilty without much context. Hansen offers chat transcripts that the audience presumes are accurate. Most of the perps end up admitting that they're sick bastards anyway.

Nonetheless, part of me thinks this construct of pop-culture justice is terribly unfair.

Third and possibly most dangerous, 'To Catch A Predator' leaves viewers with the notion that that primary online danger to your daughter or son is a bunch of computer-savvy middle-aged men.

While some middle-aged men can be dangerous online, most teens are smart enough not to engage in a face-to-face meeting with strangers. The danger parents should consider relative to online communications involving teens are those they have with each other.

Your 15-year-old daughter is less likely to be raped by some 34-year-old trucker than to be acquaintance-raped by Joey, the 16-year-old boy who walks her to school everyday, or by Ed, the upstanding football-team quarterback, who date-rapes your daughter at the prom.

The institution behind this Dateline NBC phenomenon is a Portland, Ore., outfit called Perverted Justice. The organization was started by a young help-desk employee who realized via his Yahoo! chat-room exploits that the folks preying on 14 and 15-year-olds online were never caught despite his assumption that police would be workin' the online beat to catch these creeps.

The employee was a dude named Xavier Von Erck. Now, that's not his birth name. He changed it when he was 15 from something like Phillip Eide. Either way, Xavier Von Erck is a much cooler name. Von Erck has been accused of using his organization to wage personal wars with people online, going so far as to set up some poor schmuck from Searcy, Ark., into committing adultery and then humiliating him online.

Von Erck's personal Web site -- angrygerman.com -- shows the driving force behind Dateline's 'To Catch A Predator' to be quite the, well, angry German. I personally disagree with just about everything he says on his site. In fact, I find his personal rants distasteful and, frankly, scary.

However, isn't his organization, Perverted Justice, actually fulfilling a public service?

I'd say it is to an extent. The people who do his bidding online engage chat-room trollers in conversations that end up about sex. Those folks then convince these trollers, almost always 25 to 54-year-old men, to show up at a house, where eventually they're busted and humiliated on television.

Might I add that their humiliation will soon last forever in the form of 'To Catch A Predator' DVDs?

Each big city seems to have that guy whose crusade it is to play the role of vigilante. Oklahoma City has Brian Bates, the video vigilante, who films prostitutes and johns for the purpose of humiliating the johns. Dallas had the 'Barking Dog' guy, who filmed people who urinate in public in the Greenville district for the purpose of humiliating them online. Portland and now the nation has Von Erck.

Personally, I subscribe to the Shakespearean theme of "methinks thou dost protest too much" as it pertains to these overly aggressive vigilante activists. There's a part of me that experiences deep schaudenfreude when they themselves get into a bit of trouble. According to an article posted on the radaronline.com Web site, one NBC staffer was quoted as saying that he or she often roots for the perps in the Predator series.

When I said that I loved this show, I really meant it. It's addictive, and it's great television. However, I am not under the presumption that this is some public service our world really, really needs.

While I am typically uncomfortable with public shaming, I don't mind it when it's directed toward a 41-year-old software engineer who is trying to seduce your 13-year-old daughter. That's appropriate.

However, the notion that a person can be arrested and tried and convicted on the basis of what Perverted Justice does, via the Dateline series, is pretty incredible to me. Not sure that I buy it legally or ethically.

Furthermore, these online predators aren't even the biggest problem your kids will face in terms of the possibility that they'll be molested or raped. That will probably happen via a relative, friend or teacher.

Sorry to break that news to you, but you're just going to have to be a better parent.

Nevertheless, I loves me some Dateline NBC Predator show, as I call it. You can go ahead and think less of me, but it's inescapably good TV.

I just need to take a bath afterward.