The Dumbest Story Ever Told
Posted on 21. Nov, 2009 by Jeremy Montano in Denver, Featured
A lot of things happened on October 15, 2009. President Obama announced that, because of economic conditions, Social Security recipients would not see an increase in funds. New U.S. Military rules banned media photos of dead soldiers in Afghanistan, even as the dead continue to pile up in that region. Health care, an issue that could affect every citizen of this country, continued to be fiercely debated. Yet it’s unlikely that most people heard anything about those stories. Because that day a six-year-old child decided to go on a balloon ride.
Yes, yes, that’s not exactly what happened. We all heard the rest of the story, even those of us who had shrugged it off as unimportant. The boy being in an attic, the apparent hoax, the family’s weirdness. All well-worn territory, if only because the media has refused to shut up about it. Voyeurism-enthusiasts everywhere even got an added pleasure when young Falcon, a small child undoubtedly under major psychological stress from being forced by his parents to lie on live television, puked on the air. Oh, the laughs his torment gave us all! He’ll need years of therapy, but isn’t worth all of our smiles?
Now, of course, everyone wants the heads of this family on a platter. True, those lovably dysfunctional numb-nuts wasted taxpayer money, manipulated their children, and cruelly deceived the American populace. They should be punished according to the law. Still, it’s hard for me to get all indignant about it. After all, it worked, didn’t it? The media not only wasted hours of our time while the balloon was in the air, they’ve continued to waste our time since, with wall-to-wall coverage and interviews even after the “incident” was not only resolved but turned out to not even be much of an incident at all. What’s more, the viewers at home bought it, and continue to feed the media’s sick obsession with a family that, after all, was hoping to get on TV. Hook, line, and sinker.
And if I know America, we’ll continue to buy it for months on end. Oh sure, we cry for their heads now, but does anyone honestly think their ploy for attention is failing? It’s only a matter of time before TLC gives them the reality series they were hoping for. A book deal is surely on the way, and the family would need only to make one teary appearance on Larry King Live and pretend to be sorry to make America feel bad enough for them to buy their new fragrance. And do I hear the producers of Lifetime already prepping a TV movie?
What’s sadder is that we’ve been through all of this before. The local news is nothing but pointless stories; house fires, skunks caught in basements, car crashes, some sports scores, and perhaps one brief sound-bite about an issue of importance, but never more than that. Every few months, another pointless story like this one grips the nation’s attention. Remember Terry Schiavo? Remember Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride? Remember the endless Michael Jackson trials and Paris Hilton antics? Or how about any of the endless streams of adorable, white, middle-class children gone-missing that have gripped the attention of the cable news networks time after time?
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have sympathy for the victims in these stories; the disappearances and kidnappings of children cause a lot of heartache for their families, local car crashes and house fires can ruin lives, and the Falcoln Heene story, had it been real, would have certainly been tragic, given that a child in that situation would have almost certainly been killed. That said, the media attention focused on such incidents can only exacerbate the pain for those involved. What’s more, our priorities are incredibly out of whack. While America was engrossed watching live coverage of an empty helium balloon, how many children were dying in war, in poverty, and from a lack of health care, even in our own country? How many people in third-world countries were losing limbs or even lives to gather diamonds for spoiled Americans? How many Congressional bills were being debated that could affect the taxes we pay and the lives we live? Yet, not only were we focused on one boy in a balloon, we even continued to reward the TV networks with ratings even after they had proven themselves to be incompetent, gullible buffoons that had fallen for an obvious hoax.
It is that media incompetence, and our complacency towards it, that is the most troubling. A “Mythbusters” episode had, apparently, previously proven the whole Balloon Boy escapade to be impossible. After the fact, a Headline News reporter even admitted knowing it was a hoax all along because of the movement of the balloon. So why did they still cover it, and where is the outrage towards the media for wasting everyone’s time? In all the misplaced anger towards the Heene family – attention whores, yes, but no different than every other reality show star, octo-mother, or vapid celebrity whose attention-whoring we constantly reward – where is the anger towards the cable networks for covering this garbage so excessively to begin with?
While we’re all watching CNN or its even more incompetent competitors, MSNBC and FOX, and shaking our fists in anger at a six-year-old, why are we not shaking our fists at the newscasters and television executives that chose to hide the news – the real news – from us that day?
The next time you turn on the news channels to find another kidnapping, celebrity trial, or balloon floating through the air, do your patriotic duty: turn it off.
