In Weld County, CO, It's Raining White Children...
Ohhhh hell...I can't not blog about the biggest news story of the day, especially since it all happened practically in my backyard and the family involved apparently chose to call 9News, my current employer, as one of their first actions. In the future, I would hope that the first thing the Heenee's would do would be to thoroughly check their house for their son. Or keep an eye on their sons in the first place. And maybe not build a weather balloon in their house when they are not actually scientists or meteorologists.
By now people have learned that this family has appeared on ABC's Wife Swap not once, but twice. Out of sheer coincidence, Tracy and I happened to watch a rerun of one of their appearances just a couple of nights ago. The father comes off as an egotistical, misogynistic, overgrown child with control issues. The wife appears to be enabler along for the ride. Although you can't trust reality television to actually present things as they really are (a paradox foretold by Paddy Chayevsky and others over 30 years ago), its hard to imagine someone would let themselves look like such freaky, irresponsible and permissive parents unless they were actually freaky, irresponsible and permissive parents. I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree. Or the helium-filled, experimental weather balloon far from the house it was made in.
The good news out of all this is that the child is all right (and was apparently never in danger) and someday we'll look back at this the way we once did Jessica Lynch's story when she spent that long dark night in the well. The bad news is that this story is one more symbol of a society where parenting takes third priority after self-promotion and Whatever Feels Good At That Moment. This is a country where the only thing that seems reliably real is the depths to which people will go to gain notoriety.
Peace...
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