The bizarre event has been boiled down to two words: "balloon boy."
People now could be correctly summing it up in one word: hoax.
Millions of people worldwide sat transfixed at televisions and computers Thursday witnessing the unfolding drama: In Fort Collins, Colo., a balloon resembling a flying saucer broke loose from its moorings supposedly carrying aloft a 6-year-old child trapped inside.
Authorities scrambled to action. Family and friends wrung their hands. Media hung on during every minute of this roller-coaster reality ride.
But reality, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted, is a sliding door. And now that door has slid open.
Behind that door, police now speculate, are parents who concocted the balloon episode in a ploy to land starring roles on their own TV reality show.
The boy apparently was never aboard the balloon. Now, the alleged motives of the father, Richard Heene, have drawn increasing suspicion from investigators. A self-described former business associate of Heene's has come forward to describe the boy's father as a self-promoting opportunist who saw reality television as a springboard to fame.
The big undoing, though, may have come from the mouth of the 6-year-old himself, when son Falcon said in an interview, "You said we were doing this for a show."
Law enforcement are pursuing charges against Mr. and Mrs. Heene, including felonies -- and if they are found guilty, they should be punished fully for helping perpetrate the needless circus that tied up emergency personnel, played havoc with airport flight paths and inconvenienced who-knows-how-many thousands of people.
And if they did cry "wolf," it will make it even harder in the future for people who have a genuine crisis to be taken seriously, especially by media with a jaundiced eye.
So is it all a hoax? That's for the police and prosecutors to prove conclusively, and we hope the truth will come out -- but we certainly know what the growing mound of circumstantial evidence looks like.
Winning a spot on a TV reality show has become America's pop-culture equivalent of knighthood. Today fame can be instantaneous, and reality programming is polluted with too many people who crave fame but can't be bothered to acquire it through merit or through actual, respectable achievements.
Some people's ambition can even balloon out of control.
And that kind of behavior should be neither encouraged nor rewarded.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
apt title for editorial on TEE center.
touche
In the media's mad rush to have the most sensational story of the day, they leave themselves open to hoax. No thinking needs to be involved on either side. This isn't the first and it won't be the last.
its like whats in al capones vault.. except without the stellar moustache.
This hoax was so transparent it screamed. The real question is why do the Non-Minority Media continue to lose credibility, but put a tin foil balloon story as something worth watching. The degree of ignorant of the editors, the reporters, the networks, the ignorant masses, all made to be fools. Or were they already fools and that fact exposed?
If this was a hoax, and the father did tell this 6 year old that they were doing it for the show....my question is 1. why tell a six year old what you're going to do, don't you know kids will tell all, they don't know any different, and 2. why would the father ask this child why he didn't come out when they called him. Didn't the father know that the kid would spill the beans? Even though this family evidently has some issues and wanted to have a reality show and seem a little lax when it comes to putting the children's best interest first (since they take the kids along on these storm chases)....I still have my doubts whether this was a hoax or if the child was talking about something else. I hope they do get to the bottom of it though. I didn't enjoy being upset and concerned for several hours thinking there was a small child flying around in that balloon that could loose his life.
The news media sucks and so does the chronicle.
I thought this was about the TEE center based on the headline
....H A N N I T Y...A N D...B A L L O O N...B O Y...S T O R Y...
For people who love or hate Sean Hannity please read this and pass it on. I swear this is true, because even though I'm super left in my politics I monitor rightwing hate radio religiously (and I am religious too for that matter).
I was listening to Hannity on the radio as he was watching the events unfold on tv and describing them.
I swear to god, as he was giving his 'play by play' of the balloon flying through the air, he said...
"I think I see the little boy peeking out of the balloon".
He also repeatedly said that the balloon was 'clearly a well designed hi-tech device'. Even though it was really a silly piece of trash no more impressive than junk people put together for haloween every year.
In the aftermath he has continually defended the father as being a 'cool interesting scientist'.
I just hope that good conservative people will reconsider any faith they might have in the judgement of Sean Hannity.
I think he is someone who will do anything he can think of to keep an audience listening to his show for ratings and money.
I have full respect for good conservatives and I'm al
You should watch the youtube video the kids did about stoning the fa*got and sending him to the hospital.