Why Balloon Boy’s dad deserves a break
By The Editors - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 7 Comments
Richard Heene deserves public opprobrium for his publicity stunt, not a jail term
Eccentric inventors were once the stuff of romantic comedy. Today they’re the object of derision, anger and possible six-year jail sentences. Does this say something about eccentrics? Or the rest of us?
Richard Heene, father of six-year-old Falcon, the famous Balloon Boy, has been called many things over the past week, the most charitable of which may be “candidate for world’s worst dad.” Yet in many ways he seems the spitting image of Dick Van Dyke’s endearing and fatherly Caractacus Potts character from the 1968 musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Continue…
