Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be Gosselins

JUST to quickly recap: Richard and Mayumi Heene called 911 October 13^th to falsely report that their six-year-old had drifted away in their backyard weather balloon.

But before they called emergency services, they alerted a TV news station. That was the first of a number of things about the story that smelled bad, not the least of which were the television studios where the boy in question barfed on-air.

The parents have now been accused of faking the mishap in hopes of getting their own reality show.

I wonder how it was all supposed to play out, since actually, little Falcon Heene was simply hiding at home. Perhaps his folks planned to collapse theatrically in front of the cameras when the errant balloon was found to be empty, then register teary delight as telegenic Falcon ambled into the shot, sleepily mumbling “Whazzup….”

They didn’t really send the lad up in the balloon – you’ve got to give them that. Though Richard Heene had once pitched TV executives on the concept of a reality show featuring his children chasing storms, he had at this point stopped short of endangering his son’s life.

Still, even Hollywood pretended to be horrified. Reality TV producer Tom Forman told Entertainment Weekly that he had turned down Heene’s storm-chasing idea. “Parents get blinded by the lights, the fame, and the lure of Hollywood, and are willing to get themselves on television, including putting their children in harm’s way,” Forman said self-righteously. “This is what happens when a father tries to play television producer.”

This is also what happens when television producers routinely bribe parents to intrude on their personal lives, then trump up the drama in those lives to make them as compelling as possible. Nobody would watch such shows if the potential for conflict -- and (bonus!) disaster -- didn’t simmer through every episode.

I guess that’s what A & E producers are banking on as they put together their latest deal – a reality show featuring the late Michael Jackson’s family that was announced August 25, just two months after Jackson died. As if Paris, Prince Michael and “Blanket” haven’t had a freakish enough childhood and a traumatic enough loss, old Joe Jackson and most of Michael’s siblings are all for slapping these befuddled kids onto the telly to generate some more of that precious Jackson coin. All work and no play as a child certainly made M.J. a well-adjusted individual.

When youngsters are turned into celebrities, as they are on TV’s Jon & Kate Plus Eight, they are strung along as easily as beads on an abacus. Almost 80 years ago Canada’s own Dionne quintuplets were snatched from their parents, raised by nurses, and made to appear live, three times daily, for years, for a total of about three million spectators hidden behind one-way glass. Their whole lives were famously troubled.

Yet the public need to exploit children never abates, and the more stress the audience sees in their worlds, the better.  Some 10.6 million viewers apparently sat back to enjoy one Jon & Kate episode that promised the sight of the Gosselin family imploding earlier this year. I wouldn’t place a bet on those eight kids turning out to be happy campers.

Petunia tells me that on 18 Kids and Counting, a Learning Channel show she sometimes watches about an immense conservative Christian family called the Duggars, the mother and her home-schooled babes were recently confronted by the sight of a group of school kids performing a cute dance called the Cupid Shuffle. The Duggars do not permit or condone the pastime, and their discomfort with watching other children line-dance was apparently palpable.

I don’t know about you, but I manage to go, year in, year out, without ever stumbling on outbursts of mass dancing. This stunt stinks, either of underhanded producer intervention or Duggar disingenuousness.

Imagine choosing to have your own family’s interpersonal dynamic and unconventional values aired on prime time, with curve balls thrown in by the producers to stir up conflict. You may believe that you and your partner are the essence of goodness and common sense, and your children are perfect angels, but don’t kid yourself -- we’re only tuning in to see the wrench hit the works. And you, my dears, can only be doing it for the money.

Parents do a lot of heinous things out of greed and ego. Newsweek used the excuse of the Heenes’ alleged hoax to trot out accounts of other families who have enlisted the media to help them perpetrate scams. One Ohio couple, for example, shaved their seven-year-old daughter’s head, enrolled her in “end-of-life counseling” and went around their town raising money for “treatment” for a cancer they knew she did not have.

The worst thing about such amoral hijinks is that whatever we parents do, little eyes are watching and learning. Whether we are the grisly Gosselins, the do-right Duggars, the injudicious Jacksons or the hubristic Heenes, eventually our kids will take us to task for our actions.

As a result, when exceeding the limits of reasonable behaviour, we at least ought to make our gaffes humorous. That’s why I’m going to reject the approaches of all the aforementioned families and focus on the parental leadership of a couple of dads who recently made the news.

These bright sparks took their teenaged sons on the Grand Canyon’s grueling Royal Arch Loop, according to the Associated Press. Inexperienced trekkers, they had sensibly brought with them a personal locator beacon in case of emergency. Over three days, they used it three times, summoning helicopters full of intense rescue workers ready to do whatever it took. The emergency turned out to be that the water the dads had packed “tasted salty.” Thanks to ignorant gearheads, California Search and Rescue now receives so many of these kinds of calls that it came up with a name for them – “Yuppie 911.”

What a perfect title for the reality TV show I’m pitching.  Each week, set a troupe of flabby, unemployed metropolitan bankers out in the wilderness with their kids, their current wives, tap water, organic food, a destination and a locator beacon.

The first parent to use the beacon every week will get eliminated. I’ll even eliminate him myself, permanently, for a million dollars per episode.

My family won’t star in Yuppie 911, but still, I’m like every TV reality mom and dad. I’m just trying to teach my kids that in life, initiative is the only thing that counts.