By Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline Correspondent

The guy reminded me of my grandfather. Same western shirt, same cowboy boots, same Brylcreem in his hair. Except that I never saw my grandfather cry.

Now, this fellow wasn't blubbering, but he'd choke up every so often and a tear would form, which he'd dab away with some Kleenex wadded up in his fist. And I just sat there and did nothing. Normally, when someone starts crying in the middle of a conversation, your urge is to get out of your chair and put your arm around them, or at least tell them how sorry you are. But this was television, so I just soldiered on.

He was talking about his daughter, who'd been killed by her husband. And sadly, he was one of six straight interviews I'd done for Dateline in which the person sitting across from me was crying. We cover a lot of murder cases at Dateline, and in each case, the person I was interviewing was telling me about the worst thing that had ever happened to them; the sister, the best friend, the wife taken from them suddenly and through violence.

Television is pretty good at showcasing emotion, and there was a time when getting someone to cry on-camera was hugely desirable. "Did she squirt?" one high-profile TV doctor used to ask his producers after they returned from an interview. I suppose there are still people who seek out the tears, but I'm not one of them.

One disclaimer here: Whenever people I'm interviewing start to cry, I almost always ask them if they'd like to take a minute to compose themselves, and sometimes they do. The problem comes when virtually the entire subject you're discussing is so wrenching that tears start flowing every 15 seconds, which makes stopping and starting a poor option, and may actually prolong the interview and thus, your subject's agony as well. So in those situations, I just go on and ask the next question.

The problem with doing that is that to ignore someone else's tears, you have to shut off part of yourself, that part that makes you want to reach out to an adult so shattered by the memories you're provoking that they start to cry. And whenever I do that, I always wonder if that part of me will automatically turn back on when the interview is concluded. So far, it always has. If I sense someday that it hasn't, I'll be facing a tough choice about continuing in this line of work, which has paid my rent for 34 years.

All of that brings me to Tom Richardson, convicted in court of murdering his wife Juanita by pushing or throwing her off a cliff on the shores of Lake Superior, 140 feet to her death.

Richardson gave me an interview not long after his conviction, and under Dateline's lights, we went back over the details of the day Juanita died. At different times in the interview, he would suddenly start to sob, his voice cracking. Seconds later, he'd be composed again, speaking in that flat Michigan accent that made him sound like a homicidal Sonny Bono.

I never saw any actual tears, which made me wonder -- just as Park Rangers at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore wondered when Tom first reported that his wife was missing. One minute, they reported, he was sobbing with his head in his hands; the next, he was perfectly composed. Add to that the three different stories he told police in the first 12 hours after Juanita's death and you have grounds for the suspicion that put Richardson at the center of a murder investigation, and eventually led to his conviction. He is asking for a new trial.

I'd love to cover some stories in which I don't have to ask anyone if they'd like to take a break and dry their tears.  I can ask. But I'm sure not counting on it.

Click here for the whole story of what happened at Pictured Rocks.

by Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline correspondent

This will be Paris Hilton's eighth night behind bars, probably the most-discussed jail term ever.

Monday on "The View," Barbara Walters talked about the phone call she received from Hilton, who's in the medical ward of the L.A. County jail.

Harvey Levin, TMZ.com: She's doing better.  She's adjusting to it.  She's still fragile.  But I think, just psychologically, from what I'm hearing, she's not this ping pong ball anymore.  She knows she's going to be at this facility for awhile. 

Last week, Harvey Levin's TMZ.com was reporting Hilton was disintegrating under the pressures of incarceration...saying she'd become sullen, withdrawn...a train wreck....and being visited by her psychiatrist.

That set up last Friday's tug-of-war between a sheriff who sent her to home detention and a judge who wanted this Hilton back in the crossbar hotel.

What's also astonishing about this case is not just the attention it has received, but the venom it's generated. Browse any Internet board—you'll find a legion of posters wishing Ms. Hilton a long, unpleasant stay in the hands of the law.

It's not just the blogosphere—one Web site is selling "Paris Go Away" T-shirts.

And while she's a familiar target in the late-night cross hairs,  the huge audience reaction to any mention of her plight is so enthusiastic, it's become predictable.

Why do people care so much about her fate? Is it because she's seen as an emblem for young Hollywood, living fast, loose, and out of control? Or is it simple class warfare, a rage against the rich? Either way, a simple legal two-step, a release from custody into home detention, Became, in the public's mind, a deal with the devil in a city of angels.

Harvey Levin: It was like throwing stones in, you know, the old Roman town.  Everybody felt part of it.  Yeah, she's getting it.  I mean, there was a lot of anger toward her because they've seen her get away with things.  That's wrong, but that's the way a lot of people felt. 

Over the weekend, the heiress issued a statement saying she would not appeal her sentence, even after she and her family, and her attorney first protested it as being unfair.

Harvey Levin: This judge was a jerk.  There was absolutely no basis for what he did.  Nobody gets this kind of punishment for what she did.  He punished her for who she is, not what she did. 

But keep in mind Hilton's original sentence of 45 days follows this arrest by the LAPD last September for driving under the influence, for which she received probation, a fine, DUI classes, and lost her right to drive.

Then there were two more police stops, each when she was driving under a suspended license. To top it off, she was late to court.

Attorney Lawrence Taylor, who literally wrote the book on DUI legal-defense work says Hilton's attitude is what really worked against her.

Lawrence Taylor, lawyer: She came in and instead of being contrite and suggesting that she might be sorry for what she did and that it will never happen again, instead said essentially that it was not her fault and blamed some other people, her handlers, whoever those were.  That's not the kinda thing you say to a judge after you've just violated probation three times.

Hilton has regularly been depicted as being neither especially virginal nor cerebral. Today Barbara Walters quoted her as saying she's no longer going to play dumb.

That act, if that's what it was, was on full display two years ago when the LAPD interviewed Hilton as a witness in an unrelated criminal case.

So tonight, Paris Hilton is on a prison diet, and says she's learning a bitter, important lesson.  She also says she's shocked that so much public and media attention is being paid to her...instead of to the soldiers serving this country in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's probably the first time she's ever asked for the world's attention to be focused elsewhere.

Click here to watch the video of the Dateline report.

by Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline correspondent

Don Imus is gone. But will the kind of language that got him fired disappear with him? Don't bet on it. Rap and hip-hop artists routinely use many of those same words -- and worse -- all while depicting women as little more than sex partners.

Shock radio is alive and well. Howard Stern's contract is worth $500 million.

And more than a week after the debate started over where funny ends and offensive begins, comedians at the Comedy Union in Los Angeles were finding that line—and erasing it. So is Imus' firing the end of this debate? Or just the beginning?

Jasmyne Cannick writes and blogs about racial and civil rights issues. And about the long running battle by black Americans against degrading themes in music and popular culture.

Jasmyne Cannick:   It's easy to go after the Imuses.  The challenge now is to go after the people in your own community. There's not a day that I get up and get in my car that I don't pass by someone who is blaring lyrics of "ho," b- words, n-words.  Often times it's African-American women who are listening to these lyrics as well. 

Josh Mankiewicz: And that's more offensive to you than anything Don Imus says?

Cannick: Absolutely. The kids in my neighborhood don't know who Don Imus is.  They've never heard of him.  But they do know who Snoop Dogg is.  They know who all of those rappers are.

And this week it was rapper Snoop Dogg who said it was acceptable for black rap artists to use the same language Imus did, because, he said, those songs come from rappers'  minds and souls. They're being purchased by people of all colors. Jasmyne Cannick isn't buying.

Cannick: If we expect for other races to not disrespect us, we have to stop disrespecting ourselves.  There are very few cultures that refer to each other with degrading names.  Why is that African-Americans see no problem with it in their rap lyrics?

Mankiewicz: The argument on the other side of that is there's a market for that.  There are people buying those rap CDs not in spite of those lyrics but because of them.  So, why should an artist change if their product is selling?

Cannick: Yeah, at the end of the day it does all come down to money. But again, maybe we can actually talk about why we do go and buy that, why we do support that. 

And that same free-market argument applies to talk radio as well.

Mankiewicz: Is this the end of insulting, degrading language on the radio?

Sarah McBride, covers radio for the Wall Street Journal: God, no.  Absolutely not.  We may a see a short die down of insulting, degrading language on the radio and then it's gonna be back.  I think hosts are being really careful about what they say right now.  But, as with all these situations, it blows over and then people go—back to as much as they can get away with.

Because on talk radio, controversy sells.

McBride: The more controversial they are, the bigger the audience they get, the higher the ratings and the more advertisers are prepared to pay to be on those shows.  So, of course you wanna push the envelope if you wanna be a successful national radio host and that's pretty hard.

Comedian Chris Spencer tours nationally. He's not afraid to push the envelope, and says nothing that's happened in the last week will make him change his act.

Mankiewciz: Once you start sugarcoating or sort of sanding down the harder edges of your act, is that a good thing?

Chris Spencer, comedian: No, then I won't be me, know what I mean?  This right here, this forum is for me to be able to shock, to be edgy, to say things that other people are thinking and my goal is to make it funny.  When it's not funny, is when it becomes offensive.

Mankiewicz: So if you get seasick, don't join the Navy.

Spencer: Bingo. 

If there is to be any long-lasting impact from the fall of Imus, it's likely to be felt more on public airwaves than it will be in a comedy club where you make the choice to hear someone's act. In this business, if you're not funny, you're out of business.

Comedians like Tommy Chunn say audiences aren't paying to right social wrongs.

Mankiewicz: The marketplace plays a big role in this, doesn't it?

Tommy Chunn: The marketplace plays a huge role in what you say, where you say it, as a standup.

Mankiewicz: Because if people laugh, that means it worked.

Chunn: You've got to go with it.  

But remember, until eleven days ago it worked for Don Imus. That line between what's entertaining and what's degrading has been blurring for a long time. It didn't start with Imus, and it's unlikely to end now.

Jasmyne Cannick says it comes down to simple economics. If you stop buying it, they'll stop selling it.

Cannick: We make these talk show hosts.  We make them by buying their albums and listening to their shows and supporting them. You know, we have to shift our way of thinking if we really want to make an institutional change.  And until the majority of us are ready to do that, it's not going to happen.

It won't be easy to change our diet of cultural junk food.    A lot of people get rich feeding at that trough. In fact, if broadcasting history is any guide, Mr. Imus may be back on the air before too long... because whatever his sins, he attracted an audience.

by Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline correspondent

What do you get when you mix Mentos and diet coke?

What do you get when you eat a live praying mantis?

What do you get when you put on a rabbit suit and stage a bunch of fist fights?

The answer's the same for all of them. What you get is an explosion of e-lebrity. In other words, you become famous....on the Internet.

Chances are, if you have access to a computer, you recognize one or all of these. Maybe you were the first to click on one of them. More likely, someone told you about it, or sent it to you.

Keith Richman runs the Web site Break.com, a sort of online machine for creating e-lebrities.

Keith Richman: You're gonna go to lunch and you're gonna tell people, "Have you seen that clip on the Internet?"  The guys on the radio are gonna talk and tell their listeners, "You gotta log on to break.com and check it out."

But whether you're looking at break.com, which specializes in catchy, outrageous, and memorable video clips....or YouTube, which carries a much wider assortment of material, the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of some videos just can't be explained....or denied.

Video of a German boy waiting impatiently for his computer to boot up was seen 9 million times in one month.

One minister's daughter wanted her friends to go to church with her. They said okay, but on one odd condition – that she eat a live praying mantis. She didn't just eat it. She ate it on camera. And it got on the Internet and then, a couple of million clicks later, she was famous...not as Joanna Respold, which is her name, and not as Joanna the minister's daughter. Or Joanna the amateur actress... but as "bug girl."

Mankiewicz: How was the bug?

Joanna Respold:  It was little bitter, kind of like eating a tree, so the thorax was runny and then the rest of it was crunchy.  I wouldn't recommend it, although it is an excellent source of protein. 

We interviewed bug girl at a Hollywood party for e-lebrities, thrown by break.com and featuring perhaps the most famous e-lebrity ever—a Website designer who achieved fame sitting right in front of a keyboard.

Gary Brolsma: I just submitted it for the heck of it. And I didn't think it was gonna take off.

Gary Brolsma's "Numa Numa" dance is one of the most-downloaded clips ever.

It didn't make him rich, which is pretty much the rule, not the exception.  Generally, viral videos fall into a couple of categories—the biggest of which includes videos like the ones you've just seen, that inadvertently became popular.

But there's also a group of videos that were made specifically to attract Internet attention, like a guy miming to the song "Torn."

Another guy does a thing called "the evolution of dance."

What all of these have in common with the inadvertent group is that e-lebrities can't afford to quit their day jobs.

Some of them did get a free trip when HBO flew Gary, the "evolution of dance" guy, and the Mentos boys to Vegas for live appearances at their comedy festival. It was a chance to turn e-lebrity into celebrity.

It lost a little in the translation. Usually, you just have to be happy with your achievement, even if it's just consuming a live insect to get your friends to go to church.

Mankiewicz: You ate a bug for Christ.

Respold: Yeah, I ate a bug for Christ, exactly. 

Break.com's Richman says that money is rarely the reason people post videos.

Richman: If we put up a video, it'll be seen usually about 400,000 times that day, and maybe 800,000 to a million in that week.  And a lot of people are just gunning for that promotion.  They're not interested in payment they might receive from us.

That would include people like Floyd Lloyd.

His on-camera challenge to real celebrities turned him into an e-lebrity.

Mankiewicz: You don't seem to really be trying to provoke anybody.

Floyd Lloyd: No—I'm just having fun. 

And most of his celebrities seem to get that, and they play along.

Remember, I said "most" celebrities.

Sometimes the only people to turn a viral video into a commercial success have nothing to do with the actual video.

A slightly disturbing clip of a kid screaming on Christmas morning is real. And after it aired again and again on the Internet. Someone thought to make it into a TV commercial.

The truth is that it's impossible to predict what will catch fire in cyberspace, and what won't. Some of these videos are about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Which got us thinking.

We bought a canvas and some paint, and went to work. Then we posted it on YouTube. We called it "paint drying."

[YouTube:sD294pg3jlY]

Then we waited.

24 hours later, we were still waiting. We had only 10 hits. Not too good. Then again, it is video of paint drying. So we changed the title, from "paint drying"  to "my triple-x project".

And that made no difference. No one saw it. Well, we got 27 views, but on the Internet, that's like no one. If these are viral videos, ours was positively bacterial. So instead of being an Internet video star, I'll settle for being a supporting player.

All across the country millions of innocent wives are caught in a love triangle, battling for their husband's attention with the players of their favorite sports teams. Now, in a "Dateline" hidden camera challenge, the wives are fighting back by catching their unknowing husbands on videotape while they watch a game. Josh Mankiewicz travels from coast to coast to report in, "Honey, You're on Hidden Camera," on Sunday, March 18, 7 p.m.

by Julie Cohen, Dateline producer

When we joined with a brave group of wives to put hidden cameras in their living rooms and catch their unknowing husbands on tape, we had no idea what we were going to get. Maybe this is just my girl-perspective, but to me the results show what is so annoying and endearing about the American Male.

There was Dallas Cowboys fan Bob Bragalone, who was really sweet to his wife and kids throughout the game, but was NOT going to get off his recliner to take out the trash. And A Green Bay Packers fan Paul Rice (his wife calls him "husband head"), who expects his wife to keep handing him beers and has the bizarre habit of voicing his complaints through a plastic Halloween skull he calls "Skully" (long story, you really need to watch the show on Sunday).

Then there were the Borg brothers, Minnesota Vikings fans who didn't pay much attention to their wives until the women came into the room wearing Vikings shirts (apparently, a big turn-on). And I definitely will never forget New York Giants fan Jerry Vecchia. He's soooo superstitious, that when the Giants are on a roll, he won't let his wife Sue get off the couch, because it could change their luck.

Check out our video blog, to hear more about how we found the wives to do this, and what happened when we told the husbands what we'd been up to.

(Photo: Julie, left and Josh, right)

Click here to watch video of the show. Does any of this sound familiar? Are you or your husband sports-obsessed? Share your photos and videos here.

by Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline Correspondent

Barack Obama and John McCain have several things in common. They're both

by Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline correspondent

This week, two strange soap operas attracted an audience of millions. On TV, on the Internet, and in print, the sagas played out. And depending on how you see all this, you can choose your own storyline -- women gone wrong, women done wrong, or girls gone wild.

Singer Britney Spears, more than accustomed to headlines for her sexy onstage persona, found her image publicly deep-fried for behavior that could only be described as very troubling. She took a one-day trip to a drug and alcohol dependency center, then she stopped off at an L.A. salon and, seemingly on a whim, she shaved her head. Then, that same evening, she made a pit stop for a couple of tattoos, followed by another spin through the revolving door of rehab after her ex- threatened to take her to court over the kids.

For Harvey Levin of TMZ.com, the Internet encyclopedia of celebrities-in-crisis, Britney needs help. "Her family knows she needs help.  And the world knows she needs help.  And you know what?  She probably knows she needs help too."  

Anna Nicole Smith needed help as well, but she either didn't get it, didn't want it, got too much of it... or got it from the wrong people. That might be the curse of being beautiful, vulnerable, and constantly on the verge of being hugely wealthy. The result was that long, bizarre hearing we all saw unfold in a Florida courtroom.

The model and actress didn't have much of a career, but it wasn't her body of work that was being litigated -- it was her body, the one that made her so famous.

And 13 days after Anna Nicole Smith's death, the local medical examiner warned she was literally decomposing as her companion, her mother, and her ex-boyfriend argued about what would be done with her. It was a hearing awash in both theater and regret with Smith's estranged mother on the stand remembering her daughter's addictions.

She tried taking her daughter to the Betty Ford center. But the former Playmate of the Year didn't last in rehab. 

And so far, the former Mouseketeer seems at best ambivalent.

We talked to author and talk-radio host Dr. Drew Pinsky, an expert on addiction and the nexus between public fame and personal agony.

"People that are driven to be a celebrity, by definition, have very high incidence of what we call, 'cluster-B personality problems,' particularly narcissism," says Pinsky.  "Lots of trauma in childhood, lots of substance and alcohol use.  This predicts, guarantees more addiction and more chaos in their relationships."

So is the common theme here drugs or alcohol? Or maybe fame-- living with it and trying to hold onto it? And don't forget money. Men are lining up to claim the paternity of Smith's infant daughter who may be soon a millionaire.  Britney Spears' hair is for sale on the Internet. It's all enough to make you want to turn your head away...or at least, to tell people you do.

There's a kind of hypocrisy in this country, isn't there?  I mean, people will tell you, "Oh, I can't believe you spend so much of your time following Britney around."  And then the minute there's a story, they want to know about it.  They're clicking on TMZ.  And they're buying the latest magazine.

For Levin, it's not unlike watching accidents. "It's the same principle."

More of my conversation with Harvey Levin:

Mankiewicz: But what's our responsibility here, yours and mine?  We both, to some extent, make our living covering these people, and fueling this interest.

Levin: I mean, I don't apologize for covering it. These are celebrities who court publicity.  They want their lives covered. It's a door they opened. I mean, you can't say to me, "I open the door but I'm having a bad hair day, so this door gets shut today."

And lately, for a young woman who only a couple of years ago was at the top of her game, it's been one long bad hair day.

Levin: I think she is viewed as a dark figure, which she never was before -- a troubled person. She's not this darling anymore.  I mean, honestly, I think it's pretty amazing that Kevin Federline looks like the stable one. These women are not our royalty. They lead lives few would envy.  It turns out that when that door to fame opens, it sometimes opens to a lot of other things as well.

Mankiewicz: It was different when the studios ran Hollywood.

Levin: Totally.  Totally different.

          Mankiewicz: Certain things just didn't get reported.

Levin: Most things didn't get reported.  Hollywood looked like the perfect place, where people had the perfect marriage, the perfect looks, the perfect children, and nobody ever had a substance abuse problem.  And nobody committed a crime.  And everybody was happy, happy, happy.

Now, we get everything we always wanted to know...and so much more. And all of it's a sad, painful, and sometimes embarrassing lesson about our stars, ourselves, and the vapor trail of celebrity.