Here’s to smacking a lifeless equine with a stick...

The Heene family should either be electrocuted or applauded, and I can’t decide which.  My ire is definitely directed at the family, but I am far angrier with the media.   I flipped on the TV when I started seeing the blips on Twitter.  That fact alone scares me a bit, that people on Twitter had the story before the networks picked it up, but quickly every channel had the footage up and running.

I’m not an expert in anything at all.  My knowledge of balloons is not extensive.  I know that sucking in helium is hilarious, and popping them unexpectedly in bad neighborhoods makes people dive to the ground.  Still, my totally untrained eye looked at the television screen for about four seconds before I knew there was no kid in the sky.

It was a train wreck.  Every network jumped on board because they couldn’t be the only ones not carrying it.  What if there really was a kid in there?  They kept the camera trained on the craft the entire time, until it landed and rescuers beat it with a shovel.  They brought in hot air balloon pilots to talk about lift and air currents.  They continuously pointed out that young Falcon was hurtling 8000 feet above the Earth, neglecting to mention that even if he really was in there, he took off from nearly 6500 feet.  Officers said they saw something fall from the balloon.  Was it him?  How tragic!

There were experts on everything.  Meteorologists, and clowns, and people that have done studies on how high a child would bounce if he fell out of the sky.  Everyone spoke.  The parents fake cried on national television and the entire world bought it.

And that’s why I am leaning towards applause.

Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, and the media definitely formed a very large circle on the playground.  If they are to be that easily led then they deserve to be.  Good for Mr. Heene.  He’s gotten his fifteen minutes of fame twice now, once with the show Wife Swap, and once by pretending his kid flew off to Oz in a homemade Valentine’s Day balloon.  Good for him.

I’ve been busting my ass for a decade and ten people know who I am.  He engineered a half-million dollar hoax and is a household name.  Kudos to that.  It’s reaffirming.  Anyone can make it.  You just need the right angle.  Who cares that you’re going to owe the State of Colorado $500,000?  You’ll make that up with the book deal.  There’s certainly an army of sheep that will pay twenty five bucks for a copy of The Mylar Falcon.

The family is the number one result on Google if you type in the word "balloon".  I'm not even the number one result if you type in the name "Slade".

He’s gotten a week of coverage out of this.  A day of the chase, two days of post-crisis interviews, a day where the hoax was revealed, and three days of discussion after the fact.  Banksy said, “I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes.”  The Heene’s cracked the code.

He’s a modern day Ray Kinsella.  If you pretend to launch a child into the atmosphere accidentally, they will come.  They won’t care that physics wouldn’t allow it in the first place.  They won’t care that there’s no door on the weather balloon.  They won’t even look for the kid until hours later.

I’m inspired.  I need a kid.  If anybody’s not using theirs and wants it to be famous, I’m scheming. 
God knows I need the TV credit.

-S