…It just wasn’t exactly the attention you wanted. Authorities will be recommending criminal charges against Richard and Mayumi Heene, the parents of the boy thought to have been aboard a homemade balloon launched by the Heenes. (He wasn’t of course, he was hiding.) These are not small charges, either:
Authorities believe the alleged plot was hatched in an attempt by the Heene family “to better market themselves for a reality show at some point in the future,” Alderden said. “They were lying.”
The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office will recommend charges of conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, false reporting to authorities, and attempting to influence a public servant against the Heenes.
No charges have been filed yet, and the parents aren’t under arrest. Some of the most serious charges each carry a maximum sentence of six years in prison and a $500,000 fine.
On top of that, the Child Protective Services have been brought into the matter. I happened to catch the very end of the press conference just given by Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden announcing all this. It was a thing of beauty. At the end he announced that while the story had been spectacular and riveting for the media, he was quite sure that they had better things to spend time on. He and his office certainly did. So he was immediately ending all media contact, interviews, press releases or anything else.
Essentially, he told them to go away. He did so with good grace, good manners and humor, but he told them to beat it. I do not think it would be wise for the media to continue the circus, at least not in Alderden’s county.
All this was allegedly about getting publicity for a future reality television show.
One or both of these parents have a screw or two loose, apparently. I think they will both get a hard lesson that reality television has nothing whatsoever to do with reality. The are about to be mugged by reality.
Someone, somewhere, whom I wish I could credit and link, wrote essentially the following -
Since the market entry of the cheap video cam, parents spend God knows how much time videotaping their kids’ big events. This writer put her camera down when she took her kids to the bus for first day of school, remembering her own mother doing so and holding her hand and soothing her and sending her on her way and all… and today every one of those parents was holding a video cam and shooting the event. In essence, they were “focusing” on their kids in a literal, technical sense…. but not an emotional one. These parents were concentrating on the camera, not their kids. And what that camera produced became the event…. not, um….. the event itself.
And what has now happened? Well, those kids have grown up.
And just look around.
Very profound observation, I thought.
That is a very astute observation.
Just look around.