I'm tempted to suggest this is the silliest blog post ever in a blog that tries harder than anyone to be important and earnest. As I'm in a generous temper, however, I observe the following:

Pedophiles are naturally going to look for opportunities to molest children. That means they're going to explore places and employment that will afford them greater opportunities in that area. Since the parent[s] of a child sitting on "Santa's" lap are normally only a few feet away, I'm not sure what these alleged pervs hope to accomplish.

What we really need is Bill O'Reilly's advice on how this whole thing fits into the War on Christmas.

For some reason this brings to mind John Belushi's Mall Santa in the SNL commercial for Santi-Wrap...

"He knows if you've been sleeping, but do you know *where* he's been sleeping?"

I predict a slew of letters about how it's time that we put this whole silly Santa thing to bed, that children don't need to be filled up with fantasies about a man in a red suit crawling down their chimney on "winter solstice holiday eve", and about how malls are creepy, artificial dens of capitalist excess. Some readers will share their stories about how easy it was for them to discuss Santa with their kids and give advice on how to let them down easy.

Of course, now everyone will withhold the letters they were working on, just to show me wrong. But you were writing one yourself, weren't you?!?!?!?

"What we really need is Bill O'Reilly's advice on how this whole thing fits into the War on Christmas"

Why don't they just add a question to the job application like "do you believe the earth was created in 6 days?". If they answer yes - assume the santa is a cretin and shouldn't be allowed near children!

Or better yet, torture them slowly. We can put them in pits at the centers of malls, where the public can shower them with garbage or super-heated oil, or whatever. How courageous of our elected officials to take a stand against such wildly popular power brokers - elite sex offenders.

I wonder how long it will be before people like the CA Spitzer start passing laws outlawing Adolph Hitler and Genghis Khan - you never know, it would be really bad if they came back!

I don't care for the witch hunt nature I've seen on a lot of local news, but as a guy with a) a daughter, and b) 4 sisters, one of which had an experience with a Santa who was "feel the Christmas spirit" a little too strongly, yeah, I'm concerned.

It's one of those things to keep an eye on, to make sure that nothing bad happens - as long as it doesn't start inspiring the townspeople to start sharpening the candy canes and burning yule logs on people's lawns.

It's nearly impossible to defend yourself against a charge of child abuse. That's the #1 reason I tend to not favor "convicted-child-abusers can't do x" legislation - so many people cop a plea to avoid the expense and time and destruction of reputation that a public show trial affords.

Why does no one understand that "conviction" is not necessarily synomaous with "guilt"? or that these laws do absolutely nothing to target the people we should really be worried about - the child molesters who are so *good* at it that we haven't caught them yet?

Many jobs that involve working with kids already require a background check. The state could just add "Shopping Mall Santa" to the list if people are worried about their kids coming into contact with sex offenders.

I'd like to know what these sex offenders were charged with. In my state (MA), "sex offender" covers a wide range of crimes, including indecent exposure. The Globe did an expose about this 2 years ago. One registered sex offender got that label because he was caught having sex in his car, with another man, in the 1950s.