HOLY. SHIT.
Balloon Boy says: “We did this for the show…”
This kid’s dad looks insane, after this video goes viral on the internet, Balloon Boy is going to wish that he was in that balloon.
First, all credit to CNN for rocking the headline “Balloon Boy LIVES!” This is genius for a couple of reasons, one of which being the kid was never actually facing death. He was in an attic and survived nothing.
I heard an audio clip of this earlier this morning while I was driving to work. I’m really up in the air (yessssssss) about this shit… on an academic level, I love it. This incident says two major things that are gross about our culture:
1.) The relentless pursuit of celebrity caused two psychotic parents to manipulate their kids into this circus. Fame-hunger gets worse and worse—and once somebody fakes losing their kid in a homemade hot air balloon flotation device, it warrants a collective reflection on how much we value fame and for what reason. Is getting on the TeeVee for the sake of getting on the TeeVee (thanks, reality shows and Sarah Palin) actually valued as much for doing something actually notable and worthwhile?
2.) The instant panic-switch response we put into this. It took nothing more (nothing more) than an insane meth-addict-spontaneous-harmonica-player’s completely hair-brained scheme (“Aha! I’ll pretend my son is trapped in a hot air balloon thingy I made myself”) to send us into a 24-hour-news-cycle-induced epileptic fit. Are we really that weird and dumb that we can be held hostage by these fucking folks?
3.) Apparently this kid puked on The Today Show because he’s been paraded around so many TV shows. That’s where we’re at.
Why I might like this situation: perhaps it’s that last binge, that bender so real and so cold and so black and urine soaked, that we wake up and say “Jesus, enough of that. I’m kicking this shit.”
Or maybe it just goes down down down from here.
