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Monday, October 19, 2009
When Parents Use Their Kids
As Stepping Stones To Fame
As many know now, the Colorado officials claim that the little-boy-in-the-balloon was nothing more than a cruel hoax to help the parents of the child to further their career in reality T.V.
How someone can drag their child into a situation, where they not only led millions of people watching to believe the child may have fallen out of that balloon at one point, but they potentially endangered the lives of the rescue crew, is unbelievable and sickening.
Sadly, Richard and Mayumi Heene will not be the last parents who will use their child as a stepping stone for personal gain.
Some have unintentionally used their offspring to further their importance. On the campaign trail last year, then Sen. Hillary Clinton said that she dodged sniper bullets as soon as she landed in Bosnia while visiting the country as First Lady in 1996. Of course, news footage quickly showed that was not the case.
What was really interesting is that Hillary “Ran-With-Our-Heads-Down” Clinton brought her daughter, Chelsea, with her during that visit. It was one thing to lie about being shot at but it’s another thing to drag your own daughter into that lie.
But besides the Heenes, who starred in ABC’s “Wife Swap,” there is another, more famous, reality TV family that has used their children as eight tiny cash cows: Jon & Kate Gosselin of TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8”. Now the two are using their children in a sick tug-of-war over the show as they are fighting a bloody divorce.
Ah, it’s nice to know that the famous and not so famous can succumb to that enchanting mistress Publicity. But what to do about it?
The first knee-jerk reaction to this situation is what many have been calling for: More laws to protect the children! Right now Congress is having a hard enough time to draft a healthcare package, so asking them to create laws to protect children from their parents’ own selfishness would be an even taller order to fill.
And as many of us already know, there are no laws that will prevent some people from becoming attention-seeking media whores who don’t care who they have to step on to get that limelight.
The only thing we can hope for is that we will see how desperate some people are for fame and fortune and that it will sicken us so much that we will refuse to sink to such self-centered and disgusting depths.
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