October 17, 2009 03:31 AM UTC

"Balloon Boy" Endnotes

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• by: Colorado Pols

Free-association tests worldwide associate the word “Colorado” with “Balloon Boy” today, something one can only pray will subside over time.

Because it’s not looking so good for the world-famous Heene family of Fort Collins, whose day yesterday went from bad to…well, we’re not sure what they were actually thinking through all of this, but the kid who didn’t fly 50 miles over eastern Colorado in a homemade balloon said something on CNN that has people wondering if it was all just a fabricated stunt on Larimer County Search and Rescue’s dime. That’s not very cool for all the millions of people who dropped what they were doing and glued themselves to the nearest television set yesterday.

And as cultural ambassadors for the great and tolerant state of Colorado, they’re not doing so well either. A rap video featuring the Henne children has surfaced, and, um, it’s kind of, well, horrifying:

That’s right, Dick Henne’s boys are not “pussified,” to the extent that around 2:55 they find a “faggot in a tree,” and the remedy for that little problem is to “pick up a rock and hit him in the cock.” Way to set our tourism desirability clock back to the ‘hate state’ Amendment 2 era. Oy vey.

As icky as teaching kids that kind of bigoted dreck will be to most people, there’s a simpler question about this incident Larimer County would like answered–that is, whether they need to send the Heenes a really large bill. Apparently they’ve brought in social services to make sure it’s not any worse than that, so let’s all regret having paid the attention we did to this, remind our out of state friends that they have throwback neighbors too, and never speak of it again.