THE BALLOON BOY AND HIS PUBLICITY OBSESSED PARENTS.........

Last Thursday morning in Phoenix, I was watching the midday morning news shows on CNN and MSNBC, waiting for the noon news on the local Phoenix tv stations, when wall to wall coverage of the untethered balloon and the missing 6 year old boy began. It was on all channels unbroken for two hours plus, pre-empting all other news and even daytime dramas. Yet after just several minutes I began to feel the media and the viewing audience were being sucked into a publicity stunt. Panic and near hysterical concern for the boy unfolded on nothing more than the word of one of his brothers that he was in the balloon when it escaped, yet by then reports were surfacing of the media involvement of this particular family. The father, a self professed scientist known for zany antics chasing storms and hurricanes and hauling his family even into the eye of an active hurricane; appearances on the reality show, "Wife Swap", skepticism from family friends and former colleagues about the motivation behind the incident, and later, confirmation he had been engaged in planning such a publicity stunt in order to secure a reality show, even pitching a proposal to The Learning Channel, (TLC) ala a scientific bookend to the 'Kate and Jon plus Eight' reality show. Richard Heene was also suppsedly aiming his pitch at a show on ABC-TV. So no wonder in a few short hours several media analysts and the public began to balk at the authenticity of the story being presented. By Thursday night and Friday morning the Heene Family was directly contributing to the undermining of their own presentation of what happened and why, when in an interview with CNN's highly respected news anchor, Wolf Blitzer, sitting in as substitute host-interviewer on 'Larry King Live', the supposed, balloon boy himself, young Falcon Heene, responded to a question from Wolf, after looking at his father, "You said, we did it for the show". With that the cat seemed to be let out of the bag, as even local law enforcement investigating the incident , started to reassess the reality and authenticity of the story they were being told. On Friday morning, after a very tumultuous day and overnight, the entire Heene Family, both parents and their three sons, appeared on all the network news programs. Falcon, became physically sick live on the air, on both 'Good Morning America', and the 'Today Show', while answering questions and with his parents persistently focused not on him, but answering the interviewers questions. Diane Sawyer was caused to tell the boy's mother to go with him to the bathroom to address his vomiting. Then, by Saturday night after a second interrogation of the Heene parents, the local sheriff declares it all a, "hoax" and is contemplating bringing both misdemeanor and felony criminal charges against the parents in the days ahead. In our country, one is innocent until proven guilty. But as this situation and the circumstances surrounding it are continuing to unfold, there is an increasing, mounting, feeling on the part of many people that a self serving stunt is behind the occurrence. If so, it was a costly stunt involving more than a dozen local, state, and federal agencies, including our military defenses, and for what ? Has our society become so absorbed in reality show overdrive, that obsessed publicity hounds and self promoters will go to any length to advance themselves, by manipulating everyone possible, including their own children, the media, law enforcement, as well as the general public ???? And if so, how do we curb, if not eliminate stunts like this, costing tens of thousands of dollars and precious time expended by public safety workers and first responders, from happening over and over again ? It will be a mockery of our liberty and freedom if this father and mother are given a pass, or ultimately financially benefit, if indeed, this incident is proven to have been perpetrated for personal gain. The prerogatives of any reality show, or other entertainment entity, does not merit profiteering from something of this ilk, any more than the self promoters themselves do. Will we stand up and be counted for the common good, or complicit in supporting the continuity of hijinks of a similar hue, if not even more bizarre, or will the self serving, obsessed persons in the world prevail in pulling off whatever they please at a high and unacceptable cost to all the rest of us ?.........
Troy David Powers