Yesterday, news outlets feverishly covered Balloon Boy, who apparently climbed aboard an experimental balloon which took flight. When it landed, he wasn't there, instead hiding in the garage attic. Yesterday on CNN, he said, "We did this for the show."
Kids say the darnedest things. It could be that young Falcon Henne was just confused about the question or felt pressure to say anything under the glare of the camera lights, but when asked live on CNN by his parents why he didn't come out when they called him, he responded with "You guys said... that... we did this for the show." Awkward.
Now, we're not saying the whole story was a big stunt designed to put media attention on a family which has been on the TV show Wife Swap... twice, but the whole thing has a certain stink about it. Why would the boy's brother have said he saw Falcon climb aboard before it took off if clearly that hadn't happened? Who unleashed the balloon if the boy was hiding in the attic? Considering the amount of emergency personnel assigned to chasing down the balloon and later hunting for the boy, the fact that air traffic around Denver International Airport had to be rerouted, and that we all had to listen to Wolf Blitzer wildly speculating for hours, if this turns out to be a self-promotional hoax, we'll be more than a little bit annoyed.