Stalker much?

In My Humble Opinion
1

On the way to work, heard this on the radio. Didn’t hear the whole set up, but kinda bothered by this.

Local morning radio show has a segment called “War of the Roses”, where a person (typically female) calls in, the radio DJ’s call up that person’s SO, tell them that they have won a prize of some sort and they get to send a dozen roses to the person of their choice. The idea is that if the spouse/lover is a cheating bastard, he will send the roses to his side action rather than the wife/girlfriend who called in. It’s a “cheater checker” kind of thing. They then confront the person on the air.

That’s not what bothers me. This particular segment was a bit different, though. The woman calling in is the guy’s ex-wife from a three years ago. She wants to call him out because she thinks he’s cheating on his current partner with yet another woman. She wants to call him out and prove he’s a cheating bastard.

Um, doesn’t that seem a bit stalkerish? Her rationale stated on air is that she has kids from him, and he’s a deadbeat dad, doesn’t pay his child support, and he’s already got kids with the second wife (I think married, didn’t catch). She expects he’s sleeping with yet another woman and not using any protection, probably going to knock her up, too. So her stated motivation is to alert the current wife (and probably the new girlfriend) just what a slimebag he is.

Even the DJ was a bit concerned about this. She was saying, “I’m not sure we should do this, how is this going to play out? When we catch him sending the roses to the third lady instead of the second one, then tell him it was set up by you, he’s going to probably just start cursing and hang up. I mean, I haven’t been married to you in three years, WTF?”* The guy DJ sided with the caller, and they agreed to do it, which is when I got to work and turned off the radio.

The stated rationale for calling him out was to help keep him from doing this to more women, to prove what kind of a slime he is so he can’t ever do it again. That, of course, is a fantasy. The more realistic stated reason is to interrupt this episode to keep him from having more kids that will be half-siblings to her own kids, and thus more family drama and yet more kids to be a deadbeat about.

I can’t help but think this is a bit stalkerish. Yeah, he’s a cheating pig, and a worthless deadbeat, but it’s not really your problem. Sure, you could point out to wife 2 how he cheated with her, so he’s probably doing it again, so what? Does that ever work? You call him out on the radio, but you still have to get wife 2 and girlfriend 3 to hear the segment, right? How’s that work?

How would this come across if the genders were reversed, a man calling in a radio show to talk about his ex-wife from three years ago and how she’s now banging some other dudes? Wouldn’t it be creepy, a case of “let it go already, stalker dude”? So why is it somehow justified when gender reversed?

Thoughts? Comments?

  • Paraphrase.
2

I don’t know if it is stalking or just being bitter.

3

Well, the whole concept is tacky and exploitive, but I don’t think gender makes much difference here.

I have a sister who has six kids, each of which has five half-siblings, most of which were conceived extramaritally. I sure wouldn’t fault any of the cars in that sorry-ass trainwreck for trying to spare the next one up the line.

Relationships may be transient, but like it or not, family is forever.

4

I just feel kinda sorry for her (the caller) that she’s wasting so much life-energy on this guy.

But, I don’t really like the premise of the whole setup. I kinda feel sorry for the wives that feel the need to checkup on their husbands too. Man, to live in. . . fear? suspiciousness? of your spouse is no way to live.

5

While all stalkers are crazy, not all crazy people are stalkers.

The caller? She’s fucking crazy. The epitome of batshit crazy ex who never. ever. ever gets over things. She will spend the rest of her miserable life trying to make the people around her as miserable as she is.

6

I was going to mention that it sounded staged 'cause it couldn’t be interesting that often and if it was, I’d imagine word would spread through town about the game.

Anyway, Wiki was the first result on Google:

ETA: That article is horribly unsourced. The link to Snopes actually contradicts it being staged.

7

Even if the guy is seeing multiple partners, that doesn’t *necessarily *mean he’s a cheater. The woman is too far divorced from the situation (haha get it) to know whether the couple in question is monogamous or polygamous. It’d be different if the woman herself were calling in, because we know she isn’t consenting to sharing her partner. But a third party? meh. Just call his girltoy and tell her your suspicions yourself, if you must interfere. Let her decide how to handle that information.

8

Stalker? Why I hardly even know her!

9

To be clear, though, the bit has to be staged because it is a violation of FCC regulations to broadcast a phone call unless the person was notified it was for broadcast before the conversation even began. The FCC rule with a list of actions they’ve taken against stations for violating it is here:

http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/broadcast/telphon.html

10

I don’t understand how the regulation makes this stunt impossible. Here’s how a hypothetical conversation might go down.

Ring Ring
Unsuspecting Guy: “Hello…?”
Radio DJ: “Hi, i’m calling from station XyZZ and you have won a prize. Can we record a conversation with you for the radio?”
UG: “Okay!”
DJ: “Call you right back!”
Ring Ring
UG: “Hello!”
DJ: “You’ve won a Flower Delivery sponsored by Local Flower Shop! Who would you like to receive the delivery?”
UG: “My girl on the side”
DJ: “Okay!”

Edit: The regulation
“Pursuant to this rule, before recording a telephone conversation for broadcast, or broadcasting such a conversation simultaneously with its occurrence, a licensee shall inform any party to the call of the licensee’s intention to broadcast the conversation, except where such party is aware, or may be presumed to be aware from the circumstances of the conversation that it is being or likely will be broadcast”

11

According to that FCC regulation, another popular Houston radio show is doing a segment that must be faked. This is the “Birthday Scam” segment on the Dean and Rog show currently on KGLK 107.5 the Eagle. They have been doing this bit since 1991 based out of Denver, and run a new scam daily plus play “classic” scams a couple more times each day.

I have a hard time believing they are faking this many segments. It just seems highly unlikely they would script this many variations and reactions, and manage to keep it going. I find it much more likely that radio stations are violating the FCC rules and hoping that no one will notice or that once the gig is up the people will consent and not complain because they ultimately get a prize out of it.

Looking at the list of enforcement actions and picking a few samples for scrutiny, it appears that regardless of this FCC rule, many radio stations routinely violate it, doing all sorts of radio pranks. Fines levied run to a few thousand dollars. Seems to me some radio stations may feel they get a lot of viewer loyalty out of these kinds of shows, and the penalties are not that severe, and the risks of being reported are low.

But I admit I am speculating. It does give me pause to consider the nature of the original sement. I don’t really follow the show or the War of the Roses segment, I just know they’ve been doing that bit for a long time across multiple radio stations that host their show. Same with the Dean and Rog Birthday Scam.

12

Uh, intended to quote Hero’s statement that he didn’t understand how the FCC reg would make the scenario unworkable, and am too spooked to delete the inerrant non sequitur of Cecil.

Anyway, I can’t claim to know the mind of a cheater, but I would have thought that an unwillingness to broadcast the affair would be typical.

13

Is this the glue that holds a marriage together?

14

I think the normal approach with something like this is to record it, then ask consent and broadcast it, and assume everyone will be eager enough to be on air they’ll say ok, but I don’t know if that works if they’re having their infidelity blown up on public radio. I mean, the spouse presumably finds out either way, but you’d still not necessarily want it to be public.

I also note, even though the whole thing is rather a bad idea, the specific example quoted seems a particularly bad idea: the DJ has no way of knowing if the ex-spouse is accurate when she says her old spouse is cheating, there’s any number of ways it could go badly wrong.

15

FWIW, I’ve been listening to the station doing this for several years and they recently have added a disclaimer stating that all parties have agreed to the broadcast. I suspect that they were actually fined or sued. Personally, I don’t understand why people would allow it to be broadcast. They all look like idiots. The worst was the one where they called a woman, told her they were from the Health Department and that one of her partners had an STD but that she had to confirm the first name before they could give her the information, basically forcing her to give the name of everybody she’d slept with in the last month or two.

16

Here’s an article claiming that it’s common practice to fake many calls on these shows. I haven’t read the whole thing but it specifically mentions the War of the Roses thing always being fake. And now that I think about it, I remember Seacrest getting into trouble for using fake calls some time ago.

If there’s an industry willing to supply these things, I couldn’t imagine a station doing it for real. Between the possibility of getting fined by the FCC and possible liability issues, why would you risk it?

17

I just registered to the Roula and Ryan website board to ask about the segment. Will see if anything comes of it.