Oprah Winfrey did a serious episode about pedophilia, but when it came to understanding the online activities of that despicable population she fell for a stupid posting on one of her message boards referencing the group Anonymous. Oprah got all serious like the pedophiles were telling her they were organized, and said:

“Let me read you something from our message boards about someone who claims to be from a known pedophile network. It said this. ‘He doesn’t forgive, he doesn’t forget, his group has over 9,000 penises, and they’re all raping children.’ So, I want you to know, they’re organized, and they have systematic ways of hurting children, and they use the Internet to do it.”

Anonymous is a loosely based group of people online who have made it their recent mission to protest the Scientology cult and bring awareness to the cult’s illegal activities. Their motto is “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget.” The 9,000 reference is an Internet meme that’s used by the group to reference their number of members, which is unknown and is likely much higher. They’re just a bunch of Internet-savvy people, predominantly younger, but they’ve been routinely called pedophiles by Scientologists. They’re also not that organized – anyone anywhere can claim to be from Anonymous and pull stunts like this trying to discredit them. What a coincidence that someone used Anonymous’ motto on Oprah’s message board of all places and claimed to be a pedophile. I’ve seen videos on YouTube in which Scientologists accuse their detractors of that very thing.

It’s not funny to joke about being a pedophile and raping children, and who would do that except someone trying to smear the group? Oprah’s people should have some clue about the Internet, and the fact that they fell for this obvious reference to Anonymous, which has received coverage even in the mainstream press, makes me wonder how much else in this story Oprah aired – which I did not see – was hype. Of course pedophilia is serious and threatening and we should keep our children safe, but should we get scared and freaked out about it like the whole Internet is unsafe, or take measures to make sure our kids’ activities online are monitored and we know what they’re doing?

Shame on Oprah’s entire staff for falling for that stupid posting and putting it on the air. They should issue a retraction admitting they were duped.

Here’s wikipedia’s entry on Anonymous along with their anti-Scientology efforts, Project Chanology. The Encyclopedia Dramatica (ads NSFW) is also a way to see how some members of Anonymous take the threats against them – with humor and inside jokes. It’s possible a rogue member posted on Oprah’s message board, but I would bet it’s someone trying to make them look bad. They ended up mostly making Oprah look clueless.

Moderately related update: Here’s a link to a video of Scientologists harassing people at the NY protest. They yelled repeatedly at them, handed out flyers with the names of Anonymous members and even had a pamphlet in Scientolo-speak claiming they have no morality and laugh at tragedy. At around 4:00 minutes in a guy starts yelling about how they need to take their medication. They’re exercising the Scientology concept of “fair game” or “attack the attacker.”

Thanks to ONTD for the heads up on this story.

Photo by Sklathill of an LA Anonymous protest found on buzznet.