Welcome to Balloon Boy, the Faux Reality Rescue show, with the mystifyingly happy ending.
In fact, now that it’s all over ”” and the little boy is safe and mostly sound ”” I’m not sure what I saw or what the ending actually was.
Did life imitate art or did art imitate life or is it possible anymore to tell the difference?
I was at our staging area to be flown out for a Search and Rescue operation for three overdue backpackers in Sequoia National Park here in California when I learned about the “Balloon Boy” in Colorado. For a moment our mission seemed rather ordinary. We found the overdue backpackers. It was a real story that didn’t make the national news. Thus the Balloon boy was art imitating life and perhaps more entertaining as a story. The sad part is that narcissists are guaranteed face time if they are outrages enough. In Vaudeville, they used a hook to remove those without talent.
The news was just on that the Sheriff will be charging the family with fraud and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I suspect that the media has more than a little to do with this: they were made fools of and can’t stand that fact, so have to get payback.
JE
As of this date, reality is beginning to look more and more like wilfull fraud. The balloon could not support the weight of the child, and the father likely knew it.
#3. Br_er Rabbit,
And aren’t we glad that the balloon couldn’t support the boy’s weight since his dad may have really tried to put him in there. Lucky for him the boy wasn’t in there since that would have been child endangerment, and even worse charge than a misdemeanor. I once began watching the movie “Jackass the Movie” and had to turn it off because of the lengths young “men” would go through to put themselves at risk for the sake of publicity and money. How is this any different than Steve Irwin holding his son over an alligator? God help us all from living in an adolescent male world.