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(David Zalubowski/Ap) |
Globe Editorial
It was an event that captured the imagination. For some, it was a dream, straight out of a children’s story, of holding on to a balloon and flying away. For others it was a very adult terror of an unsupervised child being placed in jeopardy.
But the voyage of the “Colorado balloon boy’’ that grabbed the attention of much of the country Thursday afternoon turned out to have been a false alarm. The boy wasn’t being carried away. And viewers would be excused for feeling a little angry and a little manipulated when they realized that the parents who had sounded the alarm had also promoted themselves as storm chasers and makers of YouTube videos. They had also appeared on the TV show “Wife Swap.’’
Somewhere between childlike wonder and adult responsibility is reality TV, where average Americans, bored with their lives, try to push themselves in new directions. But the contrivance is so obvious that the outcomes are neither real nor inspiring. The full back story to Thursday’s balloon scare may never be known. But the wonderment and horror that millions of people felt as the balloon soared upward toward the stars were the most “real’’ things about it.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
