Balloon Boy: Which Is Worse ?
I’ve refrained from making a lot of comment on the story but it’s the weekend and so I thought I’d propose a thought that has been running through my mind.
Obviously the big controversy is over whether this is fake or real. The evidence certainly suggests it could have been a publicity stunt but the father insists that it was for real.
We’ve seen lots of discussion about how it would be bad if this were a stunt, that the family had played with the emotions of the country and had wasted time and resources of the police.
But let’s assume the dad is telling the truth, that this was not a stunt. In that case we have a situation where a mom and a dad spent several hours thinking their child was dead. The child spent several hours hiding with that terror that we can all recall from our own childhoods, the moment of knowing we screwed up and worrying about all the punishment that was coming our way.
In that case isn’t it worse that the family reacted not by coming together, comforting the child, explaining to him why it was wrong, etc but instead by taking him on a round of talk shows (even when he was physically ill) ?
Part of me hopes it was a publicity stunt because being a publicity whore is perhaps worse than an unfeeling parent.
What do you think ?
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3 Responses to “Balloon Boy: Which Is Worse ?”
If it was a publicity stunt then they're also unfeeling parents. Taking the kid, who is obviously not up to it, to various talk shows is unfeeling and uncaring (about the kid anyway).
Drama queens.
I think that the alternate possibility you're describing is not really an alternate possibility. What I mean by that, is, I think the thoughtlessness behind the fact that Richard and Mayumi Heene went on television with Falcon, despite his obvious discomfort (whether caused by physical illness or anxiety) is exactly how one would expect them to behave if the balloon incident *was* a hoax. If it wasn't a hoax, and they really thought Falcon was in the balloon, my feeling is, they wouldn't have acted that way.
This wasn't just a hoax and publicity stunt, it was sick. Front and center in this story is the father.
Hopefully the government won't overreact and blindly rush to take the kids away, or expect to put the father and mother in jail for several years, which makes no more sense than the worst Drug War kinds of excesses. A few months to a year in jail at most is sufficient, and don't be surprised if there is no jail time. As to the children (the parents are wackos with their “space aliens” stuff and seem self-absorbed or attention-and-ego-stroke-seeking if they want their kids to accompany them on unusual or dangerous outings, not to mention exploiting the stupid teevee crowd “shock and awe sells” mindset nowadays) — some counseling (and anger management for the stupid father) is much more in order here.
Kathy — unlike the more noteworthy and notorious example set by someone else on this site, you had responded normally to this stupid hype-event, and I hadn't the time earlier, but wanted to tell you most of all about what else followed from this event. Not so much the hype and idiocy about the event itself, but of the possible consequences. Fortunately, nobody so far has mindlessly rushed to demand that there be all-new severe restrictions on small aircraft, and brutal restrictions on personal property that can fly, especially large metal balloons (or any balloons at all — tether requirements and related nonsense are not beyond the demented scope of some). As you live in New Jersey, what I also thought about with this, having to do with something small in the air and hobbyists (albeit wacky in the Colorado case) was to wonder aloud, What if it had happened in New York metro? Not only would there have been even more hype and idiotic rhetoric (“Miracle on the Hudson” [gag]) likely, but what of the consequences? It would not be any kind of surprise to see fools like Chuckie Shumer or the Lout, Frank Lautenberg, rush promptly to demand an instant ban on private ownership of balloons, a ban on flights around New York metro, a ban of helium sales to private individuals, and other similar overreactive and totalitarian, “Nanny State Does Smothering Mothering” lunacy. For just look at how the Lout and Chuckie treated rocketry.