The air is coming out of the Balloon Boy’s story.
After appearing to let slip on CNN that the bizarre, two-hour helium-filled ride he took America on yesterday was part of an ill-conceived family publicity stunt ("We did this for a show”), six-year-old Falcon “Balloon Boy” Heene appeared with his family from their Colorado home on the morning talk show circuit Friday. And when the Heene clan was pressed about the possibility of a hoax, Falcon vomited. Twice.
When Diane Sawyer asked him about the comment on ABC’s "Good Morning America," he said, "Mom, I feel like I’m going to vomit.” He went off-screen with her to, apparently, puke. (Click here to play the video.)
On the "Today Show," Falcon lost his breakfast live, onscreen, vomiting into a piece of Tupperware.
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In case you somehow missed it, here’s what precipitated the line of questioning that got the Balloon Boy to boot on live television. On Thursday’s “Larry King Live,” Wolf Blitzer asked Falcon why he had hid from authorities while they were searching the family’s home yesterday. The Balloon Boy said: "We did this for a show."
The response seemed to slip by Blitzer. Later in the show, however, Blitzer challenged Falcon’s father, who responded like a six-year-old caught in a lie:
Some have suggested that Richard Heene and the boy were merely spooked by all the media attention.
But for a family that has appeared twice on the ABC reality show “Wife Swap,” that theory doesn’t fly.
Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden now says he will re-question Richard Heene because of the Balloon Boy’s comments.
Meanwhile, publicists who represent lawyers are angling to get their clients airtime as experts. According to one pitch I received, Joseph DiBenedetto, a criminal defense attorney who “represented Peter Gotti in a highly publicized RICO case alleging a conspiracy to murder mafia turncoat Salvatore ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravano,” thinks that the Heene family “could be liable for the moneys extended for rescue operation.”
