Dateline goes off the deep end with Letourneau/Fualaau profile

i am in total agreement with Mia and Melissa. she did her time. she should be allowed to teach again. she fell in love with this person. she is not a deviant. the fact that they are married now proves this to me. double standard my ass. if their sexes were reversed it WOULD be different. but...that's just my opinion.

Celine Dion and her husband met when she was early in her teens. He's atleast 20 years older than her. But they got married when she was older. The public seemed to accept that.

I'm a part-Samoan woman & feel sorry for Vili. I know his story well, one of a dominatrix mother, a young life of fundamentalist religion & beatings. A palagi (White) woman giving Vili attention, positive reinforcement, love & kindness aroused him to WANT to please Mary Kay Letourneau so he could get more, MORE of what he was lacking at home & in his culture. I'll bet that Vili was put on-the-rack as a child (physically, sexually, mentally, religiously) growing up in a Samoan family. There isn't one Samoan family I know of that isn't blindly dysfuncitonal, resulting in confused, traumatized children who turn out to be troubled, violent, untrusting cons. Mary Kay, however, is no angel. she is a pedophile who took advantage of a traumatized & unloved child. I speak out this way about Vili's Samoan background because child abuse in our culture is rampant & silenced, the cause for a suicide rate among our youth that tops the class.

Right on, Karen. More stupid, useless TV "news".

I've also been appalled by the entire Mary Kay story since it began--this is a really disturbed woman, who needs help, not enabling--but I guess what strikes me as we look at the fawning journalistic puff piece in this conservative political age is this: hey, at least their marriage is between a man and a woman, right? Isn't that the lesson we're supposed to take away from the news coverage? That as long as it's an opposite-sex union it doesn't matter how perverse (Mary Kay), how sequential (Donald Trump), or how short-lived (Britney's 55 minutes) a marriage is. We're supposed to believe that all of these are unions blessed by God, as opposed to all those blasphemous unions between long-term loving gay couples.

Right?

I think I just threw up a little in MY mouth, too, Joel.

Villi is totally looking at her boobs in that pic.

jeeze just rip her a new one why dont you all she served her time so now just let them be. hes old enough now and if he wants to be with her let him i say.

To reiterate what Scott H said in both of his posts, the fact that this was so fawning/nonjudgmental is really the most disgraceful part of this entire ordeal. I mean, the lack of transparency going on at Dateline is beyond abhorrent; I mean, first they dedicate Sweeps to the whole "To Catch a Predator" series (although I disagree with Scott H, I think repeated visits DO have journalistic merit, if for no other reason than the fact that the stings are still successful despite all the media coverage), and two weeks later they are basically PRAISING a woman who went to jail for engaging in the same crime the Predator series attempts to eradicate. The hell? I mean, if you are going to profile this head-case, at least lend a critical eye to the questioning/reporting.

barbara walters interviewed them right before their wedding, so it's not just dateline. it is also bw who everyone thinks is such a respectable journalist, but is really just a joke.

It's interesting that on "TV Squad", nearly everyone has commented on the situation, but very few have commented on the point of the original post -- the fact that Dateline broadcast such a fawning, uncritical piece about these lowlifes. Forget the two people involved here...why don't we hold the television "journalists" to a higher standard? Or is it SO prevalent that everyone just accepts this kind of thing and expects no better?