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The appeal of Dateline NBC’s investigative series, “To Catch a Predator,” is aggressively base: First, lure the lowest of the low — would-be sexual predators — out to a house where they expect to find a willing, underage partner, then spring a lecturing TV anchorclone on them, then show them being manhandled by cops as they’re hauled away. Hooray! More satisfying than a public stoning! Still, NBC’s preposterous claim that the show is motivated purely out of a pious concern for the public good never seemed sillier than on Wednesday night, when they decided to dress a cop up as the Swamp Thing. There’s no reason why a police officer needed to be in full Ent attire to catch these guys (whose faces, afterall, had just been recorded by network cameras). It’s pure Hollywood. But next time, how about making these would-be predators square off against someone more inspiring — like Batman!

Open Salon interview.

A struggling Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., went nuclear Wednesday, with an ad that tries to ally challenger Bob Casey with North Korea and China. Ah, the acrid smell of desperation in the weeks before a congressional election! Be prepared for even more of these terror-filled spots in these glorious final days of Campaign 2006, all of which carry a little DNA from the mother of all scare ads: The 1964 Lyndon Johnson “Daisy Girl” ad against Barry Goldwater (bottom ad, below).

From Michael Scherer’s piece today: “The GOP seems to believe that Ford’s appeal to its most reliable voters is working. In recent days, the Republican National Committee has attempted to reverse the troubling polls in Tennessee with a television ad that both attacks Ford’s religious credentials and invokes that old standby of American politics, racial fear.”

This National Republican Senatorial Committee ad against Harold Ford sports an early mention of a Playboy connection that the party hopes will rile Christians against Ford.

Salon’s piece on Rep. Harold Ford Jr.’s senate campaign spotlights his appeal to churchgoers, as in the TV spot below.