Balloon Boy Bamboozle A Bust
The Balloon Boy Bamboozle was busted wide open as a hoax after all and right out of the mouth of young Falcon Heene on Larry King Live. There were suspicions beforehand but when Falcon Heenie answered Wolf Blitzer’s question, on CNN’s Lary King Live, about why he hid so long by looking to his father and saying, “… you said we did it for the show” it wasn’t only his words that gave up the hoax but his father’s body language and fumbling around attempting to avert what Falcon had blurted out.
The culture of mass distraction in the chase for 15 minutes of fame is indicative of society’s media-driven narcissistic illusions of achievement without working for it. It is evdience of a loss of values, ethics, and morals that seems to be going largely unnoticed.
The “Balloon Boy” became the focus of CNN on Thursday October 15, 2009 - over 5 hours of endless coverage that started off as a developing story that had the potential to be heart-wrenching. It ended up as a story that was a scam. A non-story really that then became yet another example and story of the seeking of media-attention in a self-serving and narcissistic way.
Another Example of Narcissistic Culture Gone Wild
The Heene family’s attempt at attention and perhaps the extension of their 15 minutes of fame is but another example of seemingly endless ones by people driven by their own narcissistic need for attention – media attention – and its fame or infamy. Every person of the countless who make the news in somewhat contrived ways – “reality tv” type ways – seem to be operating under a common narcissistic assumption that fame and fortune is always at the end of the news conference and Larry King Show appearance rainbow. That fame and fortune are all that one should value and covet.
What is it about this media pop culture event, played out many times over by the news media who packages a lot of nothing and calls it news, that leaves the impression that something newsworthy has just happened?
It is the culture of distraction in stressful and insecure times? Is it the way that the masses are trying to cope with a cultural loss of “self”?
We lose what is fundamentally important in and to our lives when we allow ourselves to get caught up in this culture of distraction.
The continued coverage of the Balloon Boy extravaganza over the course of hours on CNN (and many other media outlets) exposes this narcissistic clamour for attention. One paid attention to by 24-7 news outlets because they don’t have enough actual news on many a given day to fill all the air-time. CNN’s new-wave of “developing news stories” which are now not limited to accidents, war, or terror attacks, all of which are newsworthy, I think, have hit an all-time low.
To cover the story of the supposed run-away balloon assumed to be carrying a young boy made sense up to the point where it came to what should have been its natural conclusion. The part where we found out that the boy was not in the balloon’s basket and was alive and safe. Why didn’t the endless focus on this non-story stop there?
Instead CNN’s Prime-Time shows all interview the family and repeat the story ad-infinitum. What came next, the fact that Richard Heene, described as an eccentric scientist and storm-chaser, who it turns out apparently works laying tiles and has a previous record of arrest, is likely going to be charged with what Colorado Police are calling “misdemeanors” is, in fact, news. Oh the irony of it all.
The Balloon Boy story has gone bust. Yet it is still grabbing headlines. Now it’s really the story of just how the story came to be the non-story that it turned out to be.
According to Yahoo News: “Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden told reporters Saturday that officers were preparing search warrants and drawing up charges against eccentric amateur scientist Richard Heene and unidentified members of his family.”
“Police were initially convinced Heene and his family were telling the truth about the circumstances of Thursday’s drama, when Heene’s six-year-old son, Falcon, was thought to have floated away in a home-made balloon.”
”The story dominated cable television broadcasts for several hours as millions tuned in to watch the drama unfold.”
“More than 80 law enforcement officers, news helicopters and search crews tracked the balloon Thursday as it soared 2,500 feet (762 meters) above the ground for more than 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) before landing in a field near Denver International Airport.”
The questions as to what had really happened with this whole story, the balloon, the supposed missing 6-year-old boy really became obvious after the boy himself, Falcon Heene, the subject of the search and media concern said during a Larry King Show interview done by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, that he was hiding fearing he would be in trouble with his father. He said that he didn’t come out of that “hiding” because, as he awkwardly gazed up to his father and then back to the camera, “you guys said that we did this for the show.” What? That’s right, out of the mouth of babes still comes the unadulterated truth. And did young Falcon’s innocent and truthful disclosure begin to blow the lid off this whole thing or what? I watched that interview, ahem, come on, who wasn’t watching? It was quite noticeable that young Falcon had made his father uncomfortable. His father’s recovery wasn’t very skillful either. The truth outs itself and still on they go with the deception. I wonder how many people didn’t want to believe that Falcon’s admission was just that? I wonder how many people really wanted this to be the story it had been made out to be?
Culturally there is this cognitively distorted desire to have the truth be convenient rather than accurate.
It seems to me that a major lesson of this whole Balloon Boy saga – hoax really – is that there really isn’t any substitution for truth and hard work. That even if one finds his or her way onto television and into the media circus spotlight in the narcissistic self-absorbed fowarding of his or her own agenda, one really cannot achieve what one does not honestly earn in this life.
Sadly, I don’t think enough people realize this yet. I think there are too many people who still think that getting on televison for what Andy Warhol coined as “15 minutes of fame” which he saw as an expression of the fleeting condition of celebrity, has meaning beyond the absurd. It really doesn’t.
We live in a narcissistic culture driven by a pop culture that considers celebrity and its fame to be an accomplishment in and of itself. Pop culture that has come to value the nothingness of fame for the sake of it. A culture that seems to have disavowed itself from the work ethic and from what really matters in life and the pursuit of actual achievement.
In or around the 1970′s we saw the advent of entertainment-news. What an oxymoron. Nonetheless, now, sadly enough, as the Balloon Boy story gone bust illustrates, yet again, we can finally be assured that the news has now become, to a large degree, entertainment.
The Balloon Boy story, then extravaganza has gone bust. It was a hoax. Is CNN embarrased? Will this change their “developing news story” policy at all? Or will the ratings they garnered be what matters most and not the veracity of the story?
Who got hurt right? Does it really matter at the end of the day?
As to who got hurt, well, I’d say Falcon Heene got hurt. Not physically but psychologically. He cannot possibly benefit, nor can his brothers, from his parents’ lack of personal responsibility or accountability and his outright dishonesty.
It can be argued that everyone is, to some degree, hurt, or perhaps its more accurate to say, negatively impacted when a commonly trusted news outlet like CNN not only follows this story initially but then refuses to let it go.
And, yes it matters. It matters for countless reasons. But chief among those reasons is the expense, time, money, and risk that was inherent in the involving of 80 law enforcement officers, news helicopters and search crews. I don’t know what punishement will fit the Heene family’s narcissistic crime but they should absolutely have to foot the bill for the cost of those law enforcement officers and search crews’ time. Thankfully, no one was injured or worse, in this now obviously unneeded search effort. Something that Richard Heene doesn’t seem to care at all about. Or something that pales in comparison to his need for his own self-aggrandizement.
It matters because when society places value in the narcissistic attainment of attention, fame, and celebrity for essentially nothing, and/or in deceit and for personal gain, not only does it do a disservice to all of us, our values, morals, and integrity, but how can it help but make a mockery of the news media? Media that we need to be able to have some healthy trust in to inform of us of the real news of the day. Media that needs to learn that 24-7 cable news isn’t just about ratings and pandering to the whims of the advertisers’ audience. 24-7 cable news might benefit from re-evaluating its mandate. Is it news or entertainment?
© A.J. Mahari, October 18, 2009
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