For a little over a week, an eternity in news cycle dog years, the uproar over TSA pat-downs has dominated the media landscape like the bastard spawn of Rod Blagojevich, Sarah Palin, and Balloon Boy. Heading into the Thanksgiving weekend news dead zone, there seems little chance its momentum will slow, but The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz may be ushering in the most welcome phase of this story’s arc: the inevitable backlash against the TSA backlash.

Richard Heene is a world-renowned inventor. Sure, he’s mostly renowned for inventing a little story about his son being horribly endangered but, hey, creativity is creativity. So that’s why we’re all super excited about his latest invention; the Bear Scratch, a plank of knotty wood covered in a hard gel coat and designed to give you a “full scratching!” Clearly it sounds awesome.

Thank God for the 24 hour news-cycle, without which we would never be able to dig into every public interest story until we hit scandal gold. Like the case of James Sikes, the man behind the wheel of the out-of-control Prius from Monday, and who it is now being reported may not have been as innocent as he seemed when his car’s accelerator jammed, speeding up to 94 mph before being guided to a stop by the California Highway Patrol.

Empathy, sorrow and compassion are emotions one typically feels after watching a guest tear up on television. But every rule has an exception, and the appearance of Richard Henne (a.k.a. father to Balloon Boy) on Larry King is one such exception. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer aired clips of tonight’s coming interview with Larry King in which Henne gets remarkably emotional telling his side of the story, most notably, that there was no hoax. Video after the jump.

Does saying the F-word on live TV even matter anymore? Maybe not if you’re Kathy Griffin and expected to say outrageous things that will make Anderson Cooper look adorably abashed on CNN’s live New Year’s Eve special — because they both ignored it so smoothly. F-word? Live TV? Yawn. Happy New Year, everybody!

It’s easy to get caught up in the news craze of the day or the week and lose sight of the larger context. But which stories have really had the largest media impact in 2009? Luckily, there’s a graph for that. The good folks at GOOD have put together an infographic that visually represents the degree to which “print, television, radio, and internet reporting” paid attention to the big stories of the year. Larger graph after the jump:

If the media were a politician who had to answer the question every incumbent party dreads “are you better off now than you were eight years ago?” it would be in for a sweeping defeat. And in fact, the media, or the media as we knew it at the beginning of this decade has suffered a sweeping defeat — will we even have newspapers in ten years? Doubtful.

Since mid-October, you have probably been wondering: Balloon Boy’s parents Richard and Mayumi Heene, what ever happened to them? Are they rich and famous yet? Well, their sentencing is today, and they could wind up the exact opposite of rich and famous: fined $46,000, and in jail.

Looking back over the last few days at the events surrounding Tareq and Michaele Salahi — the Virginian couple who crashed last week’s White House state dinner — it’s hard not to wonder whether we haven’t just witnessed the invention of some brand new type of reality game show: extreme reality. Unlike Balloon Boy all signs point to the Salahis wanting to be caught. Now they get to tell their story to the Secret Service.

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith was a guest on The View this morning, and discussed the White House’s war with Fox News, Balloon Boy and more.

But as Joy Behar noted in her introduction, “When the Obama administration declared war on Fox News, I don’t think he had Shepard Smith in mind.”

According to a recent Rasmussen survey 80% of Americans think that Americans pay too much attention to sensational news stories. Snap conclusion? At least some cable TV viewers are aware they are supporting something they disapprove of. Apparently ‘sensational TV’ is the new tobacco industry.

So it’s the day before Halloween, and you don’t have a costume. What to do? Fortunately, Mediaite has come up with some costume suggestions for you. Pulled straight from the headlines, these are guaranteed to be hits:

The story of “Balloon Boy” Falcon Heene has become the newest national joke, the “I’ma let you finish” du jour. While the story is absurd, the media seems to be ignoring the darkest chapter. Recently, Rachel Maddow and Countdown ran humorous segments about the boy’s live vomiting on NBC’s Today Show. They’re not the only ones to make light of this, but they are the straws that broke the camel’s back.

By now everyone knows that last week’s Balloon Boy incident was a hoax, pulled off by a family desperately hoping to land a reality television show.* The quest for fame through ignominious means is not a new phenomenon by any stretch. However, children on reality television is a rather newish trend and so far pulling in terrific ratings. Is it all that surprising the Heene family tried to get a piece of the action?

Bill O’Reilly‘s status as top cable news host probably helped him land one of the last exclusives left in the whole Balloon Boy saga – with Larimer County, CO Sheriff Jim Aldernen.

With Aldernen’s slow action in declaring this a criminal case, O’Reilly had some material to work with. And he channeled ‘the folks’ for his questions.

Late yesterday, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden told reporters that he expects to file criminal charges in the case of 6 year-old “Balloon Boy” Falcon Heene’s non-ride on a runaway helium balloon. He also said that his office was trying to obtain search warrants, and expressed disappointment that they could only file class 3 misdemeanor charges.

The announcement came on the heels of “Balloon Boy” dad Richard Heene’s bizarre press conference, in which he insisted there was “Absolutely no hoax,” then provided reporters a box in which to place their questions.

Balloon Boy Updates Here: Sheriff confirms that the flight was a hoax this afternoon in press conference. Richard Heene, Balloon Dad, will be charged with at least a Class 3 misdemeanor, if not federal charges, according to an announcement by Larimer County Colorado Sheriff Jim Alderden last night.

Richard Heene, the father of the infamous Balloon Boy, called reporters to his house this morning for a press conference of sorts. The man who has had the media, and frankly everyone on the Internet atwitter, made it seem like a big announcement would be made outside his home this morning. Instead, he only told the assembled reporters “Absolutely no hoax” before asking them to put their questions in a box so he could answer them later.

As expected, Balloon Boy’s comment on CNN’s Larry King Live last night (“we did this for a show”) has caused a media frenzy – although not nearly as much of a frenzy as the whole Balloon incident that started this thing.

The parents of six-year-old Falcon Heene thought it would be a good idea to go on the full morning show circuit, but to prove just how good an idea it really was, Balloon Boy puked live on air during two interviews.

Wolf Blitzer was handed, on a mylar platter, the scoop of the day – “Balloon Boy”, Falcon Heene, responding to the question of why he hid in the attic so long with a tenuous, “You guys said that we did this for the show.” His father reacted like the jig was up (“Man…”); his mother, holding out hope, pushed back. I immediately sent the tweet “Um, I think the Balloon Boy just said he didn’t come out of hiding because, ‘we did it for a show.’ Wolf, want to check on that?”

It didn’t take long for Balloon Boy and his spotlight-loving family to tell their story, spending an hour with Wolf Blitzer who filled in for Larry King on CNN tonight.

While Richard Heene and Mayumi Heene (Balloon Boy Falcon Heene‘s parents) mumbled their way through a story about their traumatic day, it took a hide-and-seek-loving six-year-old to finally admit the truth.

Fortunately, “Balloon boy” Falcon Henne was just found alive in an attic. But when it wasn’t certain whether he was dead, the Internet went wild making jokes about him. It doesn’t help that “balloon” is a funny-sounding word and that the craft in question is funny-looking, but the detachedness with which many people treated the possible death of a 6-year-old boy is disturbing.