They desired attention, and they got it all right. When Richard and Mayumi Heene, those storm-chasing, "Wife Swap"-appearing gluttons for celebrity, reported their son Falcon missing and possibly adrift in a silver balloon that fateful day in October, they perhaps imagned themselves surrounded by television cameras. They may not, however, have envsioned themselves standing before the judge who was sending them to jail.
For what court documents described as instructing their three children "to lie to authorities as well as the media regarding this hoax" in order to "make the Heene family more marketable for future media interests," Richard Heene pleaded guilty last month to the felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant, while his wife Mayumi pleaded guilty to the Class 3 misdemeanor of false reporting to authorities. They also, as Mayumi's own lawyer told a Colorado judge today, "have reached the top ten lists of blunders of the decade."
The first to hear his fate was Richard, who told the court, "I do want to reiterate that I'm very, very sorry. And I want to apologize to all the rescue workers out there, and the people that got involved in the community. That's it." He was sentenced to 90 days jail time beginning January 11, 60 of which may be served under work release.
In a statement to the court, Mayumi's attorney Lee Christian asked for leniency for his client, who is not a citizen and could face deportation back to her native Japan for her crime. "She's a good wife, she has a marriage of 12 years," her lawyer said. " She is a good mother. She has three kids that are doing well. ... She is smart, she is polite, she is kind. ... She does not have mental health problems.... All of these things would argue for no jail." Mrs. Heene waived her right to make her own statement.
After acknowledging that "Her offense is less serious than Mr. Heene's," Judge Stephen Schapanski ordered her to 20 days in jail, to be served after her husband completes his sentence, and which can be done nonconsecutively so her children have adequate care. Like her husband, Mayumi also gets supervised probation, community service and must write a letter of apology to her community. They also face up to $47,000 in restitution fees. But despite Mayumi's lawyer's argument that "The media has profited from this" and that "if the Heenes make any money from this it be diverted for legal fees," Judge Schapanski was quick to shut that down. "The court is going to order the condition of not profiting from this event," he said, adding that "it would simply allow them to benefit from the hoax."
Aside from the jail time and probation and the plain old disgust the Heenes earned in all of this, perhaps the best example of any justice in action is that while you and I can still make some bank from this whole dumb debacle, the ones who wanted most to profit from it can't.
For one breathless October afternoon, the news world as we knew it ground to a screeching halt to follow one image -- a silver balloon floating over the Colorado sky. In it, maybe, was a 6-year-old boy named Falcon. On the ground was his seemingly distraught family. Parents across the land wrung their hands in reflexive empathy at the thought of a helpless child adrift in the heavens. There was horror when the balloon came down and no boy was in it, followed by the relief when he emerged, soon after, from a hiding spot in his garage attic. And about a minute later, dots began connecting.
Wasn't this a family of attention-seeking, storm-chasing "Wife Swap" veterans? Wasn't the dad, Richard, shopping around his own show?
And then, while being interviewed that evening for the cameras of which they seem so very fond, the family's story really started to unravel. Within moments into a CNN segment, it went from Richard's "We believed 100 percent he was on board" to the boy's innocent "We did this for the show." The next day, the poor kid threw up on national television -- twice -- while his dad kept right on talking. It wasn't long before the whole vomit-worthy story fell apart completely and Richard Heene pleaded guilty to the felony charge of "attempting to influence an official."
We can kick ourselves for being duped, but somewhere in all of it, we can take comfort that any day we haven't wasted the resources of the authorities and the attention of the world in a hoax that hinges on a small child, we're probably on a higher moral plane than the Heenes. But the network morning shows that kept on talking to the Heenes after little Falcon threw up probably aren't.
On last night’s season premiere of "30 Rock," a character uttered the soon-to-be immortal phrase “drunk on attention.” If indeed we can consider attention an intoxicant, we are right now in the midst of the mother of all spring breaks.
In the last day alone, Meghan McCain flaunted her cleavage and Jon Gosselin was sued by TLC for breach of contract for his downright promiscuous media appearances. But most notably, the son of a former "Wife Swap" contestant went missing, bumped virtually every other news story out of the headlines, turned up in his attic, and then said on CNN that he “did it for the show.”
How did we become so desperate? How did we reach a point where Paris Hilton’s mid-decade heyday suddenly seems like a golden age of reserve? While I admit a fondness for Roxie Hart’s theory in the musical "Chicago" that “none of us got enough love in our childhood,” surely there’s more to it than that.
More than ever in history, a measure of fame appears tantalizingly within the grasp of almost anybody. Sing the right song on "Idol," create a funny enough blog, and a few glorious sprinkles of stardust can fall on your humble shoulders, too. And if regular people can even momentarily become famous, then famous people have to work that much harder for our affection. “Real” housewives have just as much of a fan base as “Desperate” ones. Having a glut of celebrities and aspiring regular people alike vying for our attention, along with the field-leveling power of social networking, means increasingly desperate publicity stunts, not to mention the existence of the phrase “Tom DeLay, 'Dancing with the Stars' contestant.”
The euphoria from putting on a performance and getting a response – whether it’s a Facebook status update or a "gotcha!" balloon chase -- is heady and wildly infectious, to be sure. But attention doesn’t just represent the filling of a hole in our love-starved hearts. It’s money. The recession is not going away anytime soon. Unemployment is epidemic. Once-venerable industries are folding faster than a roomful of origami experts. And even those who have managed this year to hang on to a job are facing pay cuts, wage freezes and enforced leaves of absence.
So that wild drive for a little bit of public validation isn’t just emotional. Whether you’re a movie star or a CEO or Joe the plumber, very few of us right now are in the luxurious position of not feeling the economic screws tightening all around us.
Both Gosselins are stay-at-home parents whose income the last few years has come solely from their name. Balloon boy Falcon Heene’s dad Richard lists his occupation as a storm chaser and science detective, neither of which is known for generous compensation. Susan Boyle was unemployed when she appeared on "Britain’s Got Talent." The scramble for work, especially among people who either work in the media or fancy that they could, is relentless.
It’s easy to believe -- misguidedly, perhaps unconsciously but nevertheless resolutely, that getting enough hits on YouTube or followers on Twitter or the biggest brass ring of all – a shot at reality TV! – could lead to something lucrative. After all, it works for some people – people who appear to have remarkably few redeeming qualities. And if your house is in foreclosure and your company just downsized, fame not only looks slightly better than bank robbery and amateur porn, but it also seems weirdly attainable. It’s the crazy, frequently delusional and often downright dangerous dream of easy, big money. It’s a lottery ticket.
The average person’s chances of winning the lottery, by the way, are about one in 20 million. And in the meantime, 6-year-old Falcon Heene, whose dad went into defensive overdrive on CNN over what his son meant by saying he “did it for the show,” vomited twice on national television this morning when confronted with the same question.
We may never truly know what happened to the boy yesterday, why he spent hours hiding in a box, and what he meant when he said it was for show. But his instincts suggest the kid’s on to something. Yesterday’s relentless, round-the-clock odyssey – with reporters dashing for exclusives, pundits typing as fast as they could to get their editorials up, talk-show hosts racing to write jokes, and regular folks furiously posting their own musical tributes represented a moment not just when one little boy had a moment of fame, but the rest of the world raced to jump into his briefly shining spotlight. Because we want to. Because we need to. And the thing about getting drunk on attention is that it’s often enough to make you throw up.
I have no words to describe the relief of discovering that 6-year-old Falcon Heene is safe after watching in horror Thursday afternoon as the homemade aircraft he was said to be inside hurtled over Colorado farmland and crashed into a dirt field. I'll tell you what I do have words for, though, especially now that we know the boy is safe: The misogyny exhibited by the boy's storm-chasing father, Richard Heene, during the family's two appearances on "Wife Swap" and in his numerous YouTube videos.
Women are the subject of a handful of videos on the family's YouTube page. In one clip, the Heene patriarch shouts at the camera: "One thing that gets me is women and makeup. You don't see men wearing makeup! To me, it's a kind of clown face. It's just so fake. Why would a good-looking woman want to put on makeup? Wouldn't, like, some ugly chick wanna put on makeup to look like the good-lucking woman?" He continues: "The other complaint I have is women take, like, an hour, two hours, to put on make up!" This pet peeve got him thinking about a solution: "Why don't they invent a sheet, like, some wax paper you stick on your face?" What do you know, Heene came up with a prototype, a sheet of wax paper with blush, lipstick and eyeliner heavily painted on it, which he proceeds to press to his face. Voila! The mask is removed and he looks made up like a clown.
In another video, he addresses the issue of whether Britney Spears' breasts are fake or real. His feelings on the matter are summarized in his description of the video: "I like real boobs, not fake ones. She was already sexy. Britney looks like she got into a fight with an air hose." He dons a padded bra over his shirt, ostensibly to illustrate his point. Another video calls for YouTubers to send him video proof of Hilary Clinton's shape-shifting abilities. And, finally, as we mentioned earlier, a homemade rap video starring the Heene boys begins with the following on-screen message:
Pussification [poo-si-fi-ca-shun]: The modern day teachings of human beings living a superficial lifestyle of consumerism, obesity, and over protectiveness [sic] for themselves and their children (put them in a corner for "Time Out") in an effort gain [sic] as many supporters as possible to believe that they are better than everyone else around them. The females are typically referred to as "Soccer Moms" while the males are referred to as "Pussies."
However, the misogyny found on Heene's YouTube channel is easily eclipsed by his first "Wife Swap" appearance. Heene was paired with his parental opposite, a highly cautious, safety-focused mother. It was the kind of odd-couple that defines popular reality television: The Safety-First Mom vs. The Storm-Chasing Dad. As no doubt intended by central casting, the resulting episode was explosive. According to an episode recap by Reality TV Magazine, Heene blew his lid over his fake wife's nagging, made her a "bitchmeter out of a paper plate," threatened to shoot himself at being made to do the dishes and ultimately declared: "You're a man's nightmare. I'm so glad my wife was born in Japan" -- presumably because Japanese women like his wife, Mayumi, know how to be appropriately obedient to their husbands.
Obviously, Heene's sexism is only one of many troubling elements to the story of "The Boy in The Balloon (Who Wasn't Really In The Balloon)" -- but as cable news' talking heads dissect the family's issues in the coming days, let's not forget it.
In a media spectacle of nightmarish dimensions, stunned viewers nationwide watched on Thursday afternoon as an experimental storm-chasing balloon floated around in strong winds 400 feet above Fort Collins, Colo., thinking that a 6-year-old boy was still inside. The balloon was tethered in his storm-chaser parents' backyard; his sibling reported seeing the boy crawl in before the balloon blew away. Eventually, the boy was found in a box in his attic, according to CNN. But who could know that would happen as the heart-stopping story unfolded?
It began mid-afternoon, and we watched for almost an hour as this silver thing buffeted around in the wind. Viewers gasped as the balloon landed, slowly, maybe slowly enough that a kid inside might still be alive.
But then, the rescue workers gathered around it didn't approach the balloon quickly to see if there was a child inside. Finally, they tied the balloon to the ground and then poked holes in it, but there was no sign of the kid.
"According to police, there is no one inside that balloon," a CNN anchor finally told us. So we began to wonder: When did the kid fall out? Is he alive? Is this all a hoax? Did this couple, who appeared on "Wife Swap," do this to get attention?
Was the kid ever in the balloon to begin with?
By 4 p.m, the CNN producer spoke to someone from the Larimer County Sheriff's Office who said the search was on for the 6-year-old boy.
At first the Sheriff's department was reportedly looking for the boy in and around the home, because they said the basket hadn't been breached. Suddenly it seemed possible that the boy was never in the balloon in the first place, which would mean that we were all watching that thing floating around in the air for a good 45 minutes for no reason, like idle house cats.
Later, though, CNN reported that the basket at the bottom of the balloon had fallen off before they started filming its flight, and that National Guard helicopters were taking off to look for the boy before nightfall. Then, by 6 p.m., it was over: The boy was alive. But it had momentarily transformed us into 21st century rubberneckers, anxious to make ourselves sick over the tragic news story of the moment.
Note: This story was updated several times after its initial posting.
The 6-year-old boy who was thought to be stuck in an experimental aircraft floating over Colorado is reportedly Falcon Heene, the son of Richard and Mayumi Heene. (The aircraft has landed, and no one was inside.) Little is known about Falcon's father Richard Heene, beyond the fact that he's known as a "storm chaser," and his family twice appeared on the show "Wife Swap," which is more like "Mom Swap," because the show thrives on switching up very different styles of mothers and throwing them into each other's home. Earlier, we posted a clip of the father's rather disturbing appearance on the show, but the video was quickly yanked down from YouTube, so we've removed it as well.
The clip of Richard Heene on "Wife Swap" was from Joel McHale's "The Soup," where it landed thanks to the screaming match that erupted between Heene and his reality-show "wife," who isn't identified in the clip. But apparently the gimmick of the show was putting a safety-conscious mom into the home of a storm chaser, and McHale introduces the fight by noting that "the storm-chaser dad couldn't handle the safety mom's nagging."
In fact, the subject of the fight is kind of unintelligible, but Heene loses it, extravagantly, then breaks out his harmonica. He starts singing to the wife that she has to live by his rules, and the lyric "Come on in and get my jackhammer!" features prominently.
In what may ultimately turn out to be a tragic scene, the swapped mom tells Heene's three sons -- one of whom is presumably Falcon, the missing boy -- that she's making a new rule, "that you will take care of anything in your home that I find to be unsafe. And there's a lot of work, so let's get started." To that one of the kids yells, "Fuck this rule!"
UPDATE: Heene Boys video: "Not Pussified"
This comes from the family's YouTube channel. According to the scroll in the opening of the video:
"Pussification [poo-si-fi-ca-shun]: The modern day teachings of human beings living a superficial lifestyle of consumerism, obesity, and over protectiveness [sic] for themselves and their children (put them in a corner for "Time Out") in an effort gain [sic] as many supporters as possible to believe that they are better than everyone else around them. The females are typically referred to as "Soccer Moms" while the males are referred to as "Pussies."
A "Balloon Boy" Apologia
Video of Falcon Heene admitting "We Did This For A Show"