Has anyone been following this balloon boy thing?
October 16, 2009 - 12:06pm
I heard about this on the news late last night and then early this morning - it was funny, they were saying, "The whole world was watching" during the search. I didn't even hear about it until it was all over. Oh well.
Anyhow, listening to it this morning and hearing that the kid was hiding the whole time because he was scared of his father getting him in trouble, I kept thinking, what would drive a six year-old to hide for HOURS in an attic, while hearing people calling his name and searching for him, because he's scared of his dad?
That part of the story has been really bugging me. A lot.
Yes. And apparently the family have a reputation for being "hard" on the kids. Mind you, apparently that's gossip and should be taken as such. But it's also possible the parents rigged the whole thing, which would be another form of abuse.
I remember thinking yesterday, "So this time it's a boy in the sky rather than a boy in the ground (in a well)." Wasn't there a Simpsons episode about something like this? (There's always a Simpsons episode!)
I remember once when I was a kid, my uncle took me for a long cross-country hike without telling my parents. We had a blast but when we got back to the house (after about three or four hours) my granny gave my uncle a reaming, telling him that my mom was scared.
I thought I was in trouble too so I hid in a closet.
If the facts are true, then this poor kid accidentally released the balloon the family was building as a project. He'd be upset and scared so I can see him hiding. And lets face it....no-one can hide like a kid.
Michelle, it gets worse. The family has been on the show "wife swap" - twice.
The whole story is a bit hinky if you ask me. But they're getting some boffo publicity out of it.
The same thing came to my mind Michelle. I wondered about a child hiding for that long a time in fear of their parents. I can relate to that type of fear in a child because I had it when I knew there was a session with a belt coming. Sounds like this child had something real to fear if it was not all just a publicity stunt.
This guy seems to think it's a publicity stunt.
I guess they're not too worried about libel suits at that publication!
This could be one of those moments in media history when an anchor at CNN gets caught talking to the news director off camera, saying "I'm a journalist, I am NOT going to say "Balloon Boy."
But then, maybe not......
Next on the Sitchiashun Room with Wolf Blitzer: "Balloon Boy popped by Octomom!"
Well, I will just put it this way before I recede back into the depths of the 'net.
You're all fools. Can't you see the truth right in front of you?
Weather ballon? Tosh! Clearly this is a cover-up. Boy was abducted by the reptoids.
The lead story on Thursday's "The World at Six" on CBC Radio was about a boy who was thought to be trapped on a runaway balloon. I couldn't believe that they were devoting the first five minutes of the planetary news report to this story. To make matters worse, at the end of the piece the announcer revealed that the boy wasn't even on the balloon.
What the frack is wrong with the CBC? Hundreds of people are being killed in Pakistan, the Goldstone Report gets nary a mention, and the lead story on their most prominent news broadcast is about something that didn't happen!
Well, I will just put it this way before I recede back into the depths of the 'net.
You're all fools. Can't you see the truth right in front of you?
Weather ballon? Tosh! Clearly this is a cover-up. Boy was abducted by the reptoids.
Brill.
And from whence do these reptoids spring? Why from Kate Goselin's womb of course. Its an invasion wave.
Although I find your anti-reptoid bigotry disturbing. Simply because a person has two sets of eyelids it is no reason to deny them their common humanity or a warm rock to bask upon
Although some contend they are tentacloids, offspring of Octomom.
Hence the holiday classic "I Saw Mommy Spawning Tentacloids"
and the lead story on their most prominent news broadcast is about something that didn't happen!
This just in..... There has not been a seventeen car pile up on the 401 at the Keele exit, involving a bus load of high school cheerleaders and stray dogs destined for group euthinasia at an Ozzy Osbourne concert.
And that's the way it isn't, this seventeeth day of October, 2009.
Kinda sends chills down your spine, doesn't it?
howardbeale, that last post of yours has made this my new favourite thread. :D
And now they will be charging the parents as it appears to have been a stunt to get them a tv show
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/17/colorado.balloon.boy/index.html
From the CNN link -
I read somewhere that when the balloon landed, there didn't even appear to be a spot to carry anybody or anything. Here's the CNN link to videos of the balloon.
Which raises 2 questions:
1. Could this thing really have carried a child? It doesn't look that big.
2. Would you want this guy for a neighbor? Seriously.
And while everyone was busy watching the skies, where were the fishpeople?
Depositing milt in our riverbeds, that's where.
Loathe though I am to participate in thread drift: Fishpeople you say?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFo4jbqe_2Y
(You have to be a fan of HP Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" to get this one).
More about milt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milt
Michael, I raise you a Canadian Cthulhu punk band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuGAwt2J0lg
As for the actual story? Silly people bought potentially tragic story (HOLY SHIT, THAT KID FELL OUT OF A BALLOON, WE'LL FINALLY GET FOX IN THE YELLOW JOURNALISM KISSER! - Ted Turner), turns out parentoids faked it all, people in an uproar, kids now further exposed on a media scene to heighten the parentoids reality tv cred, charges being pressed
"We were looking at class 3 misdemeanour, which hardly seems serious enough given the circumstances," he said. "We are talking to the district attorney, [and] federal officials to see if perhaps there aren't additional federal charges that are appropriate in this circumstance."
Bolding mine.
First off, ha ha. That's what you get for being stupid, you get a class 3 demeanor, then the DA and the Feds are going to go on the books and drum up some wicked old laws to toss at you to up the charges.
Second off, doesn't that sheriff's name seem a lot like Alderan of Star Wars fame?
How could it not have been a hoax? Too many Americans will believe just about anything to distract themselves from having to think about anything substantive. This story just keeps giving and giving. According to this report, the police say that the kids "likely won't face charges because of their age". I would imagine that won't satisfy certain cretins who will want to see the entire family incarcerated and the children beaten.
They're still giving this non-event prominence on CBC radio news broadcasts.
Whatever happened to the good ol' coups and assassinations of my childhood?
"We were looking at class 3 misdemeanour, which hardly seems serious enough given the circumstances," he said. "We are talking to the district attorney, [and] federal officials to see if perhaps there aren't additional federal charges that are appropriate in this circumstance."
Hey, it's not the parents' fault that the entire news media is stupid enough to believe anything, and turn it into a 24 hour news story. If it's a misdemeanor, then it should be a misdemeanor - they shouldn't be trying to cook up new charges to sling at them.
The punishment should basically just be whatever the punishment is for such a misdemeanor, including the parents being presented with the bill for the cost of the search and rescue.
As for the harm to the children from such dillwad parents - well, that's something for child and family services to look into there.
I'm not sure whether there would be some charges under the federal Aviation Authority Act.
I knew as soon as I looked at pictures of that thing on the ground, where I could see how big it was that there was no way it could get off the ground with a 50 pound kid in it.
I saw that dude on the wife swap thing. He's a nasty piece of of work.
Al-Q: I agree completely re: CBC. I was blown away when it was the top story on the World at Six. I could see The National doing it, but considering this was such a made-for-TV story, you would think that the radio could have resisted.
Michelle, I think I read that child protective services are looking into this. What the parents did is just reprehensible - involving the kids in such a huge intricate and well-publicized lie. The stress of it all showed when Falcon threw up twice on live TV after being asked why he hid. Their only concern seems to be putting these kids on another TV show. And now the poor little guy is known everywhere as "balloon boy". What will school be like for him now? There are reporters camped outside their house and huge signs calling him balloon boy. And what kind of wrath did he face from the parents after "giving up their secret" on Wolf Blitzer's show. I also cannot imagine the stress of social workers having to investigate this case - in an area where names, locations etc. are usually kept secret.
ps: If any of you want to see how dumb Wolf is, there is a hilarious youtube video of him on celebrity jepeordy, ending up with like \
-$4000 or something.
I didn't follow this in detail, but I think at one point all air traffic around Denver was re-routed. That's costly, and things could have gone wrong in that scenario, too.
Maybe we're wrong about this not being a news story.
Somehow, I wonder if it might be the news story of the decade. In a symbolic, perverse and back handed kind of way.
Meanwhile, from www.gawker.com we get:
and
I heard a brief clip on the news this morning that investigators think an unnamed major news agency might have been colluding with the parents.
Gee, I wonder which one. :D
Were they out Foxed?
Or is this about the Cable letting go?
Take a look at this video.
[note: it's an 'anti-pussification' video, featuring the 3 kids.]
It gets weirder. The hoax was intended to raise money for this:
"Heene believes the world is going to end in 2012," she said. "Because of that, he wanted to make money quickly, become rich enough to build a bunker or something underground, where he can be safe from the sun exploding."
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2009/10/17/11435656-ap.html#
Not saying the whole thing wasn't faked, but from what I've seen there is another serious possibility ....
They (CNN I believe is where I saw it) released a portion of an email from Richard Heene that supposedly proves that the "balloon boy" story was a hoax
But the edited release left out enough of the original email to hide the fact that the plan, while clearly a hoax, was not meant to be about his kid being trapped inside the balloon, but instead to have the balloon itself being mistaken for a UFO.
Now, AFAIK publicity stunts are not in and of themselves illegal, and simply flying a balloon that looks like a UFO would not be a crime, even if the media fell for it hook line and sinker.
Far as I'm concerned at the moment, it's still just as likely a possibilty that while Heene was preparing his balloon for the planned publicity stunt, the whole thing went wrong when he legitimately though the kid was in the balloon when it legitimately got accidentally released.
But that would make it a one or two day news story .... yes, Heene may be a publicity hound that will do anything to get his face on the TV, but he is by far out "hounded" by the MSM bastards that are more than capable of leaving out pertinent facts and twisting any story to boost their ratings
If it turns out that the whole things was as I suggest above as an alternative possibility, then the media should be put on trial for it's blatant deceptions.
Here is the original email (unfortunetly I don't have a copy of how CNN edited the email to make it sound like the email was directly implicating the "balloon boy" scenario.)
"Can we attract UFO's with a homemade flying saucer? We will modify a weather balloon, so that it resembles a UFO and will electrically charge the skin of the craft (Biefield-Brown Effect). We will capture the footage on film, and will utilize the media as a means with which to make our presence known to the masses. This will not only provide us with incredible footage, but will also generate a tremendous amount of controversy among the public, as well as publicity within the mainstream media. This will be the most significant UFO-related news event to take place since the Roswell Crash of 1947, and the result will be a dramatic increase in local and national awareness about The Heene Family, our Reality Series, as well as the UFO Phenomenon in general."
Hey, my kid just told me on the weekend that other kids in his class said the world was going to end in 2012, too. What is up with that? I had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe I'll start a new thread on it. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon
Karlin on the ballon hoax - what it does to the public to be fooled like that
http://www.curezone.com/blogs/f.asp?f=460
Funny that Karlin repeatedly refers to the public "being fooled". Assuming this was a hoax, I'd say it's more like being lied to.
If my house is on fire, and I tell firefighters "there are three kids in there!!!" then they're going to run in. That's what they do. They're not gullible for believing me, and I didn't "fool them". I just lied.
It's not clear to me why the public, or the media, and certainly police and rescue personnel, should not have taken claims that little Python or Eagle or whatever his name is was in the balloon. It's not like everyone got suckered into a game of 3 Card Monte.
But a lie is a protected constitutional right in the USA:
"In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States"
http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html
Or maybe it's only legal to lie if you are suppose to be a well known corporate source of trusted and important information ... who knows how the "law" is applied in the Excited States these days?
Thanks for indicating that no yards..
Also in the same 2 tiered way of things is the new white collar max mins, funny that stealing over a million from people will only get you 2 years, while stealing under may get you 5-10.
Well..it's all over now.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33454580/ns/us_news-life/