"Balloon Boy Hoax" - A lesson in publicity

I stayed home from school Thursday due to this horrible cold that I'm still fighting. I turned on the TV at one point in the afternoon to see many stations covering some sort of balloon that was flying over Colorado. Reports were coming in that this balloon belonged to a meteorologist, Richard Heene, and that his young son, Falcon, snuck into the balloon before it was released into the air.

Two hours later, the balloon landed back on the ground. There had been special helicopters following the balloon for fear of Falcon's life. However, when the police checked the grounded balloon, Falcon wasn't inside. So, some reports surfaced that he had fallen out. Oh no. Scary, right? Definitely. However, it turns out the boy had been hiding in a box in the family's garage the entire time.

This story caught the attention of millions of people, and used up many resources at an apparent cost of $14,000.

Later that night, this family, who has appeared on the reality show Wife Swap twice, was interviewed on CNN. Watch the video below up until around the first minute.



When I saw this, I was disgusted. It doesn't take someone who studies visual representation to see that the mother and father were trying to egg their son on to what they had obviously rehearsed. The young child says, "We did this for the show," in response to why he never responded to people calling his name while he hid in the garage.

It's easy to see that the parents are nervous about their son's response, and are trying to think about ways to cover it up.

I decided to YouTube this story because I heard that this family had appeared on more news outlets. This is when I found the following video of the family on the Today Show. I just laughed so hard. Start the video around the :30 mark, and enjoy.



Wasn't that fantastic?! It's too bad the boy didn't vomit ALL over his dad.

I'm not sure if this interview was filmed before or after the CNN interview, but I had some real negative thoughts take over me after I laughed out loud. I thought, wow, I wonder if these fame-whoring, sketchy people actually tried drugging their son so he wouldn't "give them away" again during an interview. I'm sure they couldn't be that horrible of people, could they? Hmmm.

Anyways, the good news is that the parents are now facing criminal charges. They wasted many state resources and tax dollars on what was supposed to be, according to a source close to the father, a publicity stunt illustrating this man's balloon's similarities to the Roswell UFO incident in 1947.

So, what I would say to this man if I ever met him is this: stay out of the limelight, buddy. Or better yet, maybe now you'll realize that you should have hired a public relations specialist to garner yourself some publicity. Why don't you stick with building some useless balloons that look like chef hats.