I'd be remiss if I didn't at least comment on the whole Colton "Barefoot Bandit" Harris-Moore story, even though it would just make this blog another media source that has piled onto this complicated and generally mishandled story. Traditional news coverage in America, being the idiotic dregs of our country's wanton middle brow-ism, has actually entertained the idea that some people see Harris-Moore as a folk hero or even a Robin Hood figure. Of course, those news agencies mostly mention Harris-Moore's prodigious Facebook following just so they can dismiss it like a bunch of middle class fuddy duddies in a 80's music video. In fact, the most shocking part of the Barefoot Bandit story is the way the story is being told and will likely be told in the future.

People are already starting to reference Frank Abignale Jr., the 1960's con artist who evaded capture in a series of increasingly unlikely ways when he was just a teenager and caught the eye of many entertainment industry people because of his unusual story. Steven Spielberg eventually slapped Leonardo di Caprio's face on Abignale and made a pretty decent movie out of his story, though that process of real life to page to screen was far less insidious and ugly than the one likely to be applied to Colton Harris-Moore's years on the run.

What's really unsettling about the inevitability of the rush to merchandise the Barefoot Bandit is that it all seems so calculated from the start. The truth is that Colton Harris-Moore was a deeply troubled kid with no decent role models or authority figures in his life and he just happened to slip through the cracks in an interesting way. This sad and somewhat inexplicable story took a bizarre turn when the kid got famous on Facebook with all the excellent timing of a delicious publicity stunt. In fact, I have strong suspicions that there's a lot more planning behind the Barefoot Bandit saga than we've been led to believe.

Let's look at the nitty gritty of Harris-Moore's story. He went from being a petty thief to a guy who was strangely capable of stealing and operating small aircraft in a relatively short period of time. In his exploits, Colton Harris-Moore allegedly snagged airplanes from secure runways and flew them across the United States and eventually to the Bahamas without hurting himself, getting lost or even significantly damaging the vehicles. I call bullshit on this whole premise. Life is not a video game. A person, let alone a partially-educated teenager, can't just hop into a complex flying machine and accurately navigate it without any training whatsoever. If the kid had just stolen a plane and managed to not die when it inevitably careened into the ground, I'd be willing to call it luck. Except that Colton Harris-Moore apparently successfully operated these machines several times and negotiated the not insignificant challenges of locating and safely landing on an island that is over 100 miles from the continental United States.

So, no, I don't actually believe that Colton Harris-Moore is a folk hero, a common criminal or even an entirely real person. I think he's a considerably more successful version of Balloon Boy. Make no mistake, a lot of people are going to get rich on this story. Amazing as it seems when taken at face value, I can't help but smell something rotten about this whole ordeal.