Orson Welles' Martians finally land--in a Colorado attic
One piece of 'Balloon Boy' fan art took the iconic poster that hangs on the wall of Agent Mulder's office in the sci-fi series 'The X-Files.'
(Credit: FullBleed.org)Two years ago we asked the question: Could the mass hysteria of the 1938 "War of the Worlds" scandal, in which a Halloween radio drama orchestrated by actor Orson Welles was mistaken for a real announcement of Martians landing in New Jersey, still take place in the Information Age?
The answer: Yes, it could. And it happened this week.
Like millions of Americans, you were probably glued to your computer watching some news outlet's live video stream or hitting refresh on Twitter for updates on "Balloon Boy," the twisted saga of a 6-year-old Colorado boy who had allegedly floated away in a flying-saucer-shaped helium balloon that his parents had built. Was he alive? Had the helium suffocated him? Had he, heaven forbid, fallen out of the balloon?
And the media flipped out.
"This Is Wrong: A Six Year Old Child Could Die On Live Television," industry blog Mediaite warned. Keywords related to the missing kid started to dominate Twitter's trending topics. More details started to pour in: the boy was revealed to be Falcon Heene of Fort Collins, Colo., whose parents were avid storm-chasers and whose family had appeared on reality show "Wife Swap." Audiences grew captivated as the whole situation became weirder and weirder.
Thankfully, "Balloon Boy" was safe. But rather than being dramatically rescued from a flying saucer in an uplifting ending worthy of the "Miracle on the Hudson," it turned out that he'd been in a box in his parents' attic the entire time: and then the really weird details began to emerge. The family quickly hopped aboard the TV news circuit, and not only did little Falcon blithely say "we did it for the show" on "Larry King Live," he proceeded to puke on two network morning shows. Later in the day, the Business Insider floated a claim that a former video intern for the boy's father, Richard Heene, was attempting to sell evidence that the entire affair was fabricated for a TV show. (This has not been proven whatsoever.)
It's annoying. It's annoying that the whole thing could have been an attention-grabbing stunt. It's even more annoying that hours of workplace productivity were slurped down the drain by streaming-video footage of a wacky silver balloon that didn't actually have a traumatized 6-year-old on board like we all thought it did. Likewise, it was probably pretty darn frustrating back in 1938 when scores of Americans realized that they'd mistaken a "War of the Worlds"-themed radio drama for a real emergency broadcast--especially for the people in the New York and Philadelphia metro areas who reportedly fled their homes in panic. (Try to explain that one to the neighbors.)
But maybe this cloud (balloon?) has a silver (tinfoil?) lining. Much has been made recently of the death of "watercooler" media: the TV show everyone is watching, the news story everyone is following, the topic that the whole world seemingly can't stop talking about. The Internet's ability to slice and dice culture into niches and easy-to-follow subcultures was supposed to more or less destroy that. Yet we had another "War of the Worlds": something weird and bizarre that made us all completely freak out like spooked chickens.
For better or for worse, just about everyone on Thursday was talking about "Balloon Boy." They were worried about him. They were incessantly searching Google News for any kind of update. They were cracking snarky jokes and wondering if it was "too soon." They were biting their nails when a photograph started to circulate that seemed to show an object falling from the silver saucer balloon. They were relieved when "Balloon Boy" was found safe. And they were angrily cursing themselves and the national news media when it became clear that the whole thing could have been fabricated. This was the news story that disproved our cynicism over the viability of true, mass-media phenomena in the Digital Age. In fact, it was the tools of the Web--streaming video, Twitter, news aggregators--that made "Balloon Boy" into the sensation that he became.
And honestly? If we have to look like gullible idiots, we might as well all be in it together.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
The family should have to pay the firefighters and police officers that wasted their time looking for this lost boy as this is a hoax done by a family with a history of reality TV shows and launching flying saucers balloons and they are starved for more attention and pull off a stunt like this.
So now important issues got bumped like Health Care Reform, Balancing the budget, how to fix the economy, gay rights, reforming education with Rev. Al Sharpton, and more. It was just a scam to grab more media attention and then write a book and movie or TV show about it.
Obviously the boy was told to hide in the attic while his big brother told a lie that he got into the UFO balloon or into a basket attached to it. Surprise surprise, there was no basket attached to the balloon and now way nor was there any way the boy could have made it into the balloon without ripping it apart. The whole family must be pathological liars and sociopaths who only care about themselves and their own fame and fortune and not about other people at all.
You are automatically assuming something that is most likely not true. The parents and older boy might have actually thought that the boy floated away in this homemade balloon.
Sounds callous and all, sure - but seriously? Judging by a quick scan of the whole story?
* the news anchors/reporters/etc got more than just a little egg on their faces (serves 'em right for instantly reporting pretty much anything as dramatic news)
* the kids got a dumb prank in, and managed to fool the entire planet for an hour or two.
* simple physics and biology would've told you that breathing an atmosphere of pure helium or hydrogen for any extended period of time is usually fatal (which is exactly what would happen if you crawled --inside-- a big-arsed balloon and tried to fly in it).
The first and last parts are, to me, hilarious, and kinda sad. Hilarious in that the 24/7/365 cable news crowd got a well-deserved (and IMHO long-overdue) kick in the huevos. Maybe they'll learn from it and think before broadcasting next time. Sad? Sure - that millions of people couldn't figure out even the most basic of science to realize that if it were true, the kid would've been dead of hypoxia before the thing even reached altitude. Instead you had 'scientists' on television trying to calculate the cubic footage of "oxygen" (heh) in the balloon... without realizing that oxygen doesn't provide lift.
How sad these organizations have come to this and what's amazing is that they don't see anything wrong with what they have done. No, they see themselves as heroes because they were the "first to broadcast the story". and the story 'was important." Watching a 6 year old die on TV - something CNN was counting on, dare I say hoping for, is sick. They still tell us about the murderer Charles Manson, as though anyone other than the media cares about this psychotic. The media lives in its own world, a world of fear and hatred and loathing and aberrations and weirdness. A world they never tire of presenting to the public - each and everyday.
Fiddle some more Nero.
You need a vacation.
In case you missed it: "...our Republic is collapsing, our dollar is collapsing"
:)
The ballon & boy were news to those folks in Colorado near where it was happening, to pilots in the area, and such. To the rest of the world it was just a daytime soap opera. I don't care what happens to the boy & the ballon until there is an outcome.
Even then, so what.
Even now, so what!
It was just f**cking pathetic.
It's amazing how people will believe whatever they are told, rather than put their brains in gear for a moment.
If you look back even further, in 1835, a New York newspaper called "The Sun" reported life had been discovered on the moon. People believed that hoax, and fifty years later it was still referenced as factual in parts of modern Germany.
In short - people are gullible. Give them something probable, feed a lot of "factual" information into it by 'experts' put a paniked spin on it, and they will eat it up.
Just like the talking heads on TV and Radio do on more mundane topics.
But did he do that?
No.
Case closed.
right--- we go from "did you hear that joke on Carson"..to "we need to dangle a 6 year old from a balloon, as the LEVEL of circus needed to attention ***** to the net autistic ?!
right, just as we went from Cronkite to Caroline....
sorry, but this dosnt work as any sort of "moral uplifter" for the net...or the latest levels of autism in the civic "see me, hear me" cries of a lost populace not getting (again 1930s) big bonuses or happiness for running investment gambling.scams.....:)
maybe balloon boy will join elian gonzales in a youtube dance video one day, oh joy, oh internet as "global saviour"...lol
if your gonna look at history, get the story.
That's the scary part.
Yeah, welcome to America - if it's on TV it must be true. Anyone wanna get the levitating magician over here for more sensationalist news? :D
- by Notebookwriter October 19, 2009 8:16 PM PDT
- thanks for putting balloon boy to rest quite nicely; I didn't fall for War of the Worlds either, of course, i wasn't alive
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