Earlier this week, Winston-Salem released information about four men involved in a June 2022 fight at a Target store and about the warrants against them. Three of the men were part of a pedophile-hunting vigilante group known as “Dads Against Predators” (DAP), which poses as underage children to lure online pedophiles into the open. Once the person shows up, they (loudly) confront them, record the encounter, then put it on their Youtube channel.
Two of the men are from Ohio and the third is from Marion, North Carolina. The two from Ohio started the group because one was sexually abused as a child and the other had a step-daughter who was sexually abused. They have been banned from many stores in Ohio because when the confrontations escalate, they often fight the alleged predators.
In the Winston-Salem Target situation, the man they lured to the store happened to be armed. So, during the fight, he pulled out a gun and fired it, hitting one of the Dads Against Predators founders in the kneecap. The three from DAP were charged with “simple affray,” which is typically given for a situation of mutual combat, and the alleged predator received a charge of simple affray and another for carrying a concealed handgun.
It’s hard to get too angry at dads fighting back against the kind of sex abuse that has damaged them personally. But police in Ohio say they want them to stop because it can lead to dangerous situations, like the shooting in Winston. The men say every time they go online and pose as a child, though, they are immediately contacted by perverts willing to meet them for sex. So until the police arrest them all, they’re going to continue doing what they do.
Vice News did a profile of DAP that released Dec. 29 (language warning).
Another story with a Winston-Salem connection surrounds comedian Jerrod Carmichael, who hosted the Golden Globes this week. I saw that fact on Twitter and was about to be proud of a fellow Tar Heel. But then I listened to it and was more embarrassed.
Carmichael came off as bitter, boring, self-obsessed, and just… not funny. It seemed a lot of the point was to make fun of those who hired him because they didn’t have enough racial diversity on their board in the past. But that is how most comedy is these days — largely political lecture without many actual jokes.
The board wanted to meet with him about all they were doing to remedy that situation, including, likely, by hiring him to be the host. But instead he refused to meet them and took the $500,000 anyway, all of which he recounts, for some reason, in his monologue.
There was probably a way to make some of that funny. But he didn’t find that narrow way. Instead, it just seemed like an uncomfortable and awkward monologue about himself. Watch for yourself below and be the judge.
Lastly, there has been a lot of uproar this week about gas stoves and whether they will soon be banned. Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka, Jr said, during an interview with Bloomberg, that they were considering a federal ban on gas stoves because of a link to childhood asthma. But after intense blowback, President Biden said they were not recommending that, and then the chair of the CPSC said they were no longer considering that.
During the nation’s brief freakout over the possibility of a federal bureaucrat outlawing their stove with a wave of the pen, a lot of funny memes were born, like the below:
We also learned that North Carolina has the LOWEST-percentage of gas stoves users in the nation, with 90% electric stoves. So if they are eventually banned, we’ll be ahead of the game.
