MayumiHeene

All's well that ends well... unless you're the parents of Balloon Boy. On December 23, 2009, Richard and Mayumi Heene faced the Larimer County Court Judge Stephen Schapanski. Balloon Boy father Richard Heene was given jail time. It wasn't unexpected because Heene had pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant and who took blame today as the brains of the hoax.

To be frank, I think they got off easy. These parents did a horrible thing to their child. Oh yes, they inflicted a hoax on the public, but they manipulated their son to create celebrity.

In case you've forgotten, the scheme was to make the world believe that six-year-old Falcon Heene was flying off into danger in a run-away hot air balloon. The media chased the balloon and the story and Falcon was never actually in the balloon. He was hiding in the garage. It was all an attempt by his parents to get TV attention.

Well, you sort of knew that this was coming, didn't you? The mother of balloon boy, Mayumi Heene, has admitted it was a hoax. The Heenes knew that Falcon wasn't in the balloon, that he was hiding in the garage. The entire boy in the balloon fiasco was a hoax from the get-go. Her court affidavit confirms what everyone has suspected.

So, this was just another desperate attempt by the family to get on television. Honestly, have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?

I say that because if these parents have even a scintilla of sense, couldn't they have projected what was going to happen when the balloon came down? Couldn't they have seen that there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?