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If "Balloon Boy" gets a reality show, I'm moving to Canada
By AprillBrandon in Pop Goes the Culture
October 19, 2009

I'll admit it. I was one of the millions of TV viewers watching the drama unfold when a young boy was thought to be floating in a giant balloon last week.

In fact, most people in the newsroom, at least for a little while, were riveted by the "real-life" saga unfolding before our eyes. We stood clustered around the TV's set up around the newsroom, giving to-the-minute updates to our coworkers who were...ahem...actually working (those suck-ups).

I mean, it's not every day you hear of a story like this. It was bizarre, suspenseful, dramatic and then it was...well, it made the majority of us want to take some pitchforks and torches and go way old school on the Heene family.

Seriously? I mean, seriously? They did all that so they could get a reality TV show?

SERIOUSLY?

Dude, come on. If you're going to do something that could potentially put you in the slammer, at least go for broke and do something so that when your inmate buddies ask you what you're in for, you don't have to answer "Well, I was trying to be the next Jon Gosselin."

Frazier Moore of the Associated Press wrote an interesting piece on this whole debacle and about how it has shed light on the fact that TV is full of shams.

"When 6-year-old Falcon Heene threw up twice while being interviewed about his role in last week's balloon ordeal, he summed things up for millions of onlookers. Sickening. ...But somehow inevitable. It's endemic of the more and more seductive urge to dismiss truth, responsibility and other traditional values in favor of hustling for fame on the genre that continues to be labeled, with less and less cause, 'reality TV.'"

I've long been outspoken on the ridiculousness that is reality TV and how I can't believe how long this supposed television trend has lasted.

Here's to hoping the Heene family has inadvertently started the decline of this "genre." Or at least put a dent in its popularity.