Deflated: Balloon Boy's the Story of Our Ugly, Sorry Era
Richard Heene has spoken out after Sheriff Jim Aldernan's press conference. He's currently "seeking counsel" and got teary as he told the AP that "this thing has become so convoluted." He's pretty on point in that regard. Who knows how this thing's going to play out. A verdict, a penalty, there's really no telling at this point how Richard Heene's going to handle the charges against him or the social and emotional tax on the Heene family. But what we do know is that the story of the boy in the balloon, filled as it was with real feelings of terror and relief, is now merely the latest illustration of the sorry state of our reality TV-addled culture. Blame the Heenes, of course, but also blame the rest of us glued to 40" hi-def images, waiting for the latest fix of manufactured conflict and emotion to get us through to the next blog post. Yes, Gawker is as bad as everyone else. But we also know that the page view counts on our reality show recaps dwarf anything we put up on, say, the death spiral of the publishing industry. All I've taken from this sad saga, really, besides the fact that reality television is bad for people—literally, people, children: from the Gosselins to the Heenes—is that the harder you try to set the truth adrfit, the more obfuscation you bury it under, and the more piles of bullshit you throw on top of it, the more gravity is skinned from it, so that, like that goddamn balloon, it rises up, up, up and out of plain view, for everyone to see, completely out of reach of the person from which it had to come from. The first bit of truth that will be lost, no doubt, is how we all are complicit in this saga. If we and you hadn't tuned in on Thursday afternoon (or clicked through on Saturday), if we weren't conditioned to lap up whatever reality freak show Richard Heene knew we wanted, this never would have happened. But fame — and what passes for genuine drama — is a hell of a drug. So this sad story (that I'd rather someone had have written before it happened, mostly, because kids were involved, and they shouldn't have been) is about the image of a balloon that might've had a kid in it and was terrifyingly captivating. If you watched, you felt terror, and you felt like shit for watching it. Between Wife Swap and the video of Falcon Heene may or maybe not being on the balloon, there's no question that America's got strong, strong voyeuristic impulses. How do you think we turn a dime around here? As quickly and as easily as this website purchased the proof that Heene's story was a load of shit, you're left with no good angle to go at this from. We've entered the vindictive phase of the story as we wait to see just how dearly Richard Heene will pay for wasting the time of the Fort Collins sherriffs, the FAA, the media and — perhaps most importantly — all of us who bothered to watch his hoax unfold this past Thursday. It seems all too easy to paint Heene as the crazed villain. But truth: it's... MORE >>
Scoring Sunday's Nuptials: Feminism's Fallen to Talking Points, But Not White Dresses
Every week, Phyllis Nefler scores the NYT's Weddings & Celebrations pages for the various Times-reading women and gay men who need their own special version of sabermetrics, and the straight men like me who deny reading them. These are Altarcations. Alliterative apologies in advance, because this is going to be an abridged Altarcations. I am vacationing in Arizona and did you know it's like impossible to find a New York Times up in here? I had to drive around in my rented Chevy Malibu for like 45 minutes just so I could find a place that would sell me the Times for SIX DOLLARS. It wasn't easy: everyone here reads (shivering) USA Today and the only place that sells the Times is Starbucks — the whole "latte-sipping, Times-reading liberal elites" thing makes SO much more sense to me now — and the first Starbucks I went to was all out, and after contemplating approaching a scary man and offering to pay him a couple of dollars just for the Styles section I decided that would be creepy and so had to go to ANOTHER Starbucks down the road. My only consolation was that on my drive back I got to think about this and giggle a lot: Anyway, the point is that I am going to help you help me by giving you some cursory thoughts on this week's Vows for you to expand upon in the comments as/if you see fit. Let's begin. Jessica Valenti got married. Your reaction to that sentence is a binary event: either you're like who? (likely) or you're throwing down your dogeared copy of "Sisterhood, Interrupted" in OUTRAGE and declaring whichever wave of feminism you are currently surfing to be DEAD. Valenti, you see, is the controversial writer behind the website Feministing and several books with names like "Full Frontal Feminism" and "He's a Stud, She's a Slut". (Weirdly, I know her best from the time she got into an epic battle with Ann Althouse over this picture: No, I'm serious, this was an actual Internet feud. You can read about it here if you're stuck inside in the New York rain and bored out of your mind. And you can read about Valenti's OTHER controversy — her marriage — over at our sister site, which has covered it much more ably than I can. (Sample comment: "Sometimes I call my sweetie's weewee his Tool of Oppression.") Jezebel is the Daria Morgendorffer to my Quinn, you know? Valenti married Talking Points Memo's Andrew Golis, <she wore light grey instead of white, and there was no bended-knee proposal, so don't worry, she's not a pawn of the patriarchy. Also, Golis claims to be a feminist but then says that he "has always detested 'fishy fish'" and even vomits after eating ceviche so I mean, take from that what you will. What else. The Times has taken a few week off from their cherished storyline of old people reuniting after years and years, but the old people are back and sprightlier than ever! Leslie Sutton-Smith and Mark Blackman dated way back in 1976 when they were members of the Columbia Marching Band and she was having... MORE >>
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