Balloon Boy Bullshit
Those parents are stupid…
Last week, I can’t really relate to the thousands of people who watched that stupid little balloon chase in Colorado. The only time I actually saw the thing was when I turned on the TV and saw a “breaking news” trailer about a giant runaway balloon that supposedly had a six-year-old boy aboard. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw it was “Boy, those kid’s parents are stupid for not watching their kid…” But I didn’t feel the same burning need that thousands of Americans felt to continue watching it and closely follow the supposed “rescue mission” to save the little boy.
The fact that the balloon was shaped like a UFO even made me chuckle for a second… talk about an abduction, huh? Good thing I didn’t say that out loud, otherwise I’d be accused of insensitivity to the plight of the hapless parents who were supposedly watching in terror as their kid is being flown for several miles, at an altitude of seven thousand feet… all alone… and afraid… Besides, the police “confirmed” the story, so it HAD to be true, right?
Anyway, later that day, I heard from some friends that the balloon had already landed, but they didn’t find the boy inside. They said the boy might have fallen from the balloon during the journey. The first thing that came to my mind was “Boy, that’s gonna be a helluva search through miles and miles of desert and farmland.” Did I worry that the boy might have gone SPLAT somewhere, like Wile E. Coyote? Of course I did, but the fact that I didn’t follow the news made me a bit desensitized to whatever might have happened. And I still kept thinking, “Boy, those kid’s parents are stupid, and now they might get charged with negligence or worse, maybe criminally negligent manslaughter.
But of course, as we already all know, the “balloon boy” was actually hiding inside a box in their garage. And thanks to a slip-up, he pretty much incriminated his parents into what is being suspected as a hoax… to promote a reality TV show that his parents wanted to appear in! I was like “WTF?!”
Yes folks, we’ve been had. It was like a decent TV drama with a really, REALLY bad cop-out ending. It was like the story of Job in the Bible, only with God appearing in the end and saying “just kidding!” It was like the Blaire Witch Project, only worse and with less snot. It was like what The Godfather would’ve been if Sonny Corleone suddenly got up from under the bloody white sheets and said “Hah, they thought they got me, but I’m just faking it! And Michael, I am your father!”
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Those parents are stupid…
It was really pretty embarrassing, for the media outlets that covered it, and most especially the police and the search teams that went through all that effort to run after a stupid-looking, UFO-wannabe, mylar balloon. And it was also embarrassing for those who followed the story that entire day, praying that things would work out, hoping that the boy is safe, and even showing concern for the poor, stupid parents that allegedly let this happen. We’ve all been had, folks. I won’t do a “hindsight is 20/20″ thing here and claim that I knew everything was fishy from the get-go. I’ve been had, too. Everyone has been had.
Except for the parents, who got free publicity, and are probably one step closer to getting some dumb, bleeding-heart media company to give them the reality show they want. Something called “Psyience Detectives” or some shit… hell, I just heard today that the father of the boy even has a song to sweeten the deal with the networks…
The cynic in me can rejoice at how outrageous this whole spectacle can be, but deep down I feel sad for the state of the American psyche (or maybe the world’s psyche – we never know what other hoaxes are flying out in other parts of the world… we can still remember that big one about “weapons of mass destruction,” so who knows if there are more…). You can probably say “hey, you’re not born in America, how can you possibly relate?” You may have a point – I grew up surrounded by third world media where game shows are strip shows in disguise… where children are indirectly exploited for the cute laughs… where disabled people are exploited for the cheap laughs… where media has become so much a part of people that in order for you to be voted by Filipinos, you don’t need to be good at politics – you just need to be a basketball star, a singer or an actor in order to have a chance…
What I’m really saying here is that American mass media is still the best of its kind in the world, and what makes it so good is also what makes it so amusingly horrid. I see a downward spiral in terms of quality, and every media outlet would rather cover a spectacle and a controversy, rather than keeping its focus on what really matters – reporting the facts. This is why I watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart more than CNN – I actually get to know the relevant things that are happening in the country, in 30 minutes, rather than spending hours upon hours watching that silver UFO zipping past the skies, and news anchors all piping worst-case scenarios…
But in the end, it all boils down to the people. The mass media won’t report it if they know people won’t watch it. And we DO like watching these things. Fuck the war in Afghanistan, gimme Balloon Baby… No matter how much we abhor what the kid’s parents did to deceive the American public, I am sure many of us will tune in once that reality TV show called “Psyience Detectives” comes on network television… I’m sure that when Oprah, Maury or even Geraldo puts the Heenes on their show, we will be watching in droves – like the damn 405 freeway when there’s an accident. We like to see something bad happen. We relish in it. And we’ll believe anything, as long as it’s very bad and it’s not happening to us…
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Those parents are stupid, but I think we, the people, are stupider…
A friend of mine once reiterated a phrase that I’m gonna end this entry with… Initially, I thought it was a ludicrous statement, thinking it can’t be that bad. But after the past years of Octomom news and that fiasco with the John and Kate thing, I’m almost in full agreement. I think he got that phrase from one of my favorite book series, The Sword of Truth. It was the Wizard’s First Rule, and it states:
“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”
- Wizard’s First Rule, Chapter 36