Comment from Jay Thomas Munson
Time October 16, 2009 at 8:40 am

So horribly true, on the cover page…
Heard this morning about the Larry King show, and the KID said, “didn’t we do this, for the show”
Kids parents should be shot!

Comment from chuckel
Time October 18, 2009 at 5:12 pm

WOW! WHERE ARE ALL THE REPUBS AND DEMS TO SPIT SLIMY SWILL AT EACH OTHER? THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLATFORM FOR THEIR VICIOUS ATTACKS ON EACH OTHER. WHERE ARE YOU MOONBEAMS?……. AND THE BEAT GOES ON.

Comment from Bull
Time October 18, 2009 at 5:23 pm

Our lives are so hollow we need this inflation to just get through the day. Don’t blame the family; they are just giving us what we really want.

Comment from Pete
Time October 18, 2009 at 5:25 pm

How can we EVER forget…”Balloon Boy”?? And the family?? So loyal, God-fearin,’ patriotic. And the media?? It’s all so…so..so…American! I just a lil more proud than I was a week ago! Yup.

Comment from Pete
Time October 18, 2009 at 5:41 pm

On 2nd and 3rd thought, maybe it was a dirty, filthy, librul, pinko, commie trick. Designed to take our
minds off the REAL problems - at Valley Forge. Yeah….

Comment from Glen
Time October 18, 2009 at 6:16 pm

A family of wackos. Course, they are also fairly normal Americans who just see little green men and greenbacks. More to the point, the parents apparently left their children without supervision, which is neglect. The children should be put in temporary foster care and the parents offered counseling.

Comment from mole
Time October 18, 2009 at 7:41 pm

What weirdos would name their kid “Falcon”, anyway? The kid starts out with a couple of strikes against him; then his parents put him up to this hoax. Now comes the TV interviews, maybe a book. Maybe weirdos can be quite smart?

Comment from dale
Time October 18, 2009 at 8:16 pm

Who would name themselves mole? Falcon is a great name. Why would anyone call parents wierdos for choosing this name? Do we judge people by their names? Do we become weird by using creativity in choosing our kids’ names? Other children would have no problem with the name Falcon…only an adult with a rigid mind would find it wierd. IMHO

According to Babycenter, Falcon is the 4313 most popular boys name; in 2008 10 of every million babies was named Falcon. The boring old days of Bob and John are over; as each child is unique, so parents seeks more unique names with imaginative resonance. My daughter, now 36, was named Zoe, very rare at the time but within a short time, Zoes were all over the place, politics, movies, etc. My daughter’s kids are named Ayanna and Iam. Perfect names for perfect babies. Thank God (says this atheist) that everyone one no longer feels compelled to adopt conventional, common Anglo-Saxon names, where Jose becomes Joe, etc. Some mourn the passing of what Beck calls “White culture;” perhaps that explains a discomfort with names that incorporate other cultures or just plain are out of the box.

When I was young, I was ashamed of my parents’ German (Volga Germans in Russia) names, Rachel and Herman. Then along came Friends, and Rachel was the fetching Jennifer Aniston, and now Rachel is quite popular. I asked my son (Ringo) if he thought Herman sounded foreign. He replied: who, Herman the German?

Comment from Monet
Time October 18, 2009 at 9:45 pm

“weirdos” “wackos” “they should be shot” I am dismayed by the judgmental tone here, and in other stories that feature less-than-ideal parenting according to what? some image of what YOU would do in complete hindsight? I totally buy the idea the kid would hide and maybe fall asleep–his dad appears to have a hot temper. ANd yes, he is a publicity hound. Personally, I would have stopped doing the interviews as soon as he was found, and I never would have put the kid on TV when he was sick. Easy for me to say. The TV producers had no scruples here, either, and the public ate it up before they started spitting it out and calling for murder. Excuse me, did I miss something here? Just because they were charged with a hoax, I haven’t heard anything that proves it. Oh, I guess choosing an interesting and warrior-like name for your kid makes you guilty of all kinds of heinous stuff. Well, maybe Kate Goslin will enjoy a break from the feeding frenzy over her by PEOPLE WHO DON’T EVEN KNOW HER.

Comment from William
Time October 18, 2009 at 11:35 pm

Stupid Kid! Enough already.

Comment from Jason
Time October 18, 2009 at 11:42 pm

Stupid Parents! Enough already.

Comment from Ernie
Time October 19, 2009 at 5:19 am

Yet another reason some parents neeed licensed

Comment from mole
Time October 19, 2009 at 6:13 am

Dale - it wasn’t meant to be taken so seriously - notice my last sentence “maybe weirdos can be quite smart”. (BTW, I didn’t “name myself” mole - it’s a nom de plume for this blog; it ties in with my Chemistry background). I don’t really care what names are given to babies - that’s the business of the parents. My *personal* reaction is that it’s weird to name a boy after a raptor, but I would never say this to the parents. As a teacher, I ran into a lot of weird (again, in my opinion) names, but that didn’t interfere with how I treated the kid. I had a boy named “Cricket” - funny name, and a funny kid.

Monet “Oh, I guess choosing an interesting and warrior-like name for your kid makes you guilty of all kinds of heinous stuff”

That’s quite a jump in logic.

Comment from mole
Time October 19, 2009 at 9:57 am

Dale - upon rereading my and your posts on “Falcon”, I need to acknowledge a “mea culpa”. My posting came across the wrong way. My concern for the kid was that his parents are weirdos (the two parents are what I referred to as the two strikes against him. I based this on the idea that they planned all this and put the kid up to it. Of course, I should wait until this is shown to be a fact, and I based this more on what I’ve read in the papers about this - and then I extended this to the name they gave him, which I shouldn’t have done.)
I can assure you that I don’t have a “rigid mind” as you said. I use the word weirdo more loosely that I should, at least on a typed message that doesn’t convey facial expressions, etc. A couple of examples. I visited my sister recently, and she showed me a new tattoo she had on her leg. I complimented her on it, but on the drive home I said to my wife that my sister was weird; this wasn’t meant as an insult, but as my summation of a fifty-something woman getting a tattoo. I love my sister in all her weirdness. I know that she thinks I’m weird too.

I once had a kid walk into my class on the first day of school. He looked quite bedraggled, and had piercings (this was more than 20 years ago before this was common), as well as chains hanging around his body. I thought to myself, “Here’s a weirdo”. He sat in the desk in front of me, and put his feet up on my desk. the first words I said to him were, “Feet off my desk, please”. My initial take on him as being weird was not an indication of a closed mind. I very quickly became quite close to him, at least as much as a teacher can to a student. He was a Christian, and he stayed after class once in a while and we compared our different philosophies of life . Of the few thousand students I taught in my career, he stands out as one of my favourites.

My two sons have often called me a weirdo. Kind of a compliment coming from them.

Comment from BayState Barncat
Time October 19, 2009 at 12:33 pm

Hey, the family just wanted their 16 weeks of fame!

Comment from concerned mother
Time October 23, 2009 at 6:59 pm

Any why is the media CONTINUING TO GIVE HIM EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTS???? Wouldn’t the best thing to do in this situation would be for the press to IGNORE this “story”?????