“Can’t Be Right, Must Be Wrong”
As you’ve likely heard by now, members of the Heene family created dozens of YouTube videos prior to this whole “Balloon Boy” fiasco. The viewer comments left under these videos are universally scathing (i.e. “What was he thinking?” “Those boys are so disrespectful!”). That’s fine – go ahead and call Richard Heene out for his foolishness. But there’s a common refrain in these comments that I find distressing: One after another, some anonymous YouTube viewer calls for Child Protective Services to kick the door down, take Falcon, Ryo, and Bradford away, and shatter this family.
“Self absorbed dad, CRAAAAAAAAAAZY mom, and out of control undisciplined kids. It was only a matter of time before something bad happened. Glad the kid is okay. Now is time for CPS to investigate.”
“your fucking nuts and your kids will be taken away lol”
“These Heene people are bizarre. Is anyone wondering how such an out of control family ‘lost’ their son? He needs parenting classes! Is CPS watching this nonsense?”
“I think child protection services have to you intervene for this child. He is psychologically under pressure to perform, and he is only 6 years old. Their father has to be arrestted as a statement.”
“Child protection needs to look into this shiteous ‘father’ whoring his kids out like this. Shame.”
You’re reading a blog that asks the question: What will it take for our culture to be healthier at the end of the century than it is now? It will take intact families. Just how a healthy family works is always evolving, but we do know that the evolutionary process begins with random mutation.
We must respect a family’s right to be eccentric. Eccentrics play a valuable role in a culture: they reveal new possibilities. They are the mutations. Even after they flame out, if they flame out, we have the privilege of safely picking and choosing from their traits. Earlier this year, I lamented how the sterilized worldview presented on television is killing off the socially needed archetype of the inventor. What about the inventor is so incompatible with TV? Why can’t he exist there? He has agency and is able to permanently improve his own life – that’s why. Richard Heene may not be a world-class inventor, but has helped, in his small way, to revive the archetype. That is laudable.
Those calling on CPS to break up the Heenes, to deprive Falcon of his plainly loving and doting, if imperfect, parents, are casting some deadly stones. They should ask where such hatred comes from. They should question why they’re so confident that CPS facilities would be a safer place for Balloon Boy to be than with his own parents, who seem pretty well adapted to his rambunctious ways. They should ask how their reality, sitting at a computer and blithely commenting on a YouTube video, might differ from the reality of a Colorado family that they’ve never even met. To paraphrase a Psyience Detectives video: How does their version of happiness differ from someone else’s version of happiness?
The family is sacred, which is to say it is needed for the survival of our civilization. Richard Heene can be forgiven his eccentricities. He will pay dearly, however, for his misguided notion that television could somehow validate or improve his already lovely family.
[...] Ironically, this point hit home for me while I was reading through comments on articles about Balloon Boy, which is not exactly an “issue of national importance.” The flint strike came in the [...]
You cite a Psyience Detectives episode, which begs the question: Are you a fan? That may explain why you’re an apologist for the scumbag.
You “conveniently” failed to mention that these two nutjobs were constantly pulling their children out of school (30 to 40 times per school year has been reported) so they can PUT THEM IN HARM’S WAY as mini “stormchasers.” Funny that.
No, I don’t subscribe to the NewAge/2012/paranormal world view. I was just doing my research when I watched an episode of the Psyience Detectives. Didn’t kill me! I saw a few adults having a good-natured conversation about “big picture” issues that were important to them. Sure, they came to some strange conclusions about reality, but so does Madison Avenue and so does Washington.
This is a country where we uphold individual rights in the face of the wisdom of the mob; thank God the American people can’t simply cast a vote on whether the Heene kids should be taken from their “scumbag,” “nutjob” parents. Should the Heene parents, in the end, keep their kids? Maybe not, but they deserve the benefit of the doubt. And it’s not really my business.
But as long as Richard Heene wanted to put himself out there as an example of good parenting, I have to say that what I see isn’t all bad. Sometimes you have to expose a kid to a little danger in order to foster that scarce virtue: courage.