The six-year-old “Balloon Boy” who captivated the nation throughout the day has admitted on national TV “it was for a show,” leaving his dad flatulent and speechless.

In an interview conducted on CNN’s “Larry King Live” earlier this evening, the Balloon Boy, Falcon Heene, admits that his father, Richard Heene, instructed him to pretend to hide in their attic as part of an elaborate hoax while police and rescuers chased after him.

With the hoax revealed, Richard Heene promptly farts and utters some unintelligible remarks. For her part, his wife can only murmur, “No! No!” to silence the Balloon Boy.

In a “Larry King Live” first, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer later followed up on Falcon’s comments, and the father refused to relay the question to Falcon, citing a conspiracy to undermine his credibility and upset his Balloon Boy.

And Wolf Blitzer immediately chickened out. ‘Hoax? I didn’t ask about any hoax!’

The boy’s father and brother have insisted throughout the day that Falcon somehow climbed aboard a large balloon contraption that became untethered and floated away with Falcon on it. Immediately after Falcon supposedly took off, the father immediately dialed not 9-11, but a local news station to ask for help from helicopters to track the balloon. Sounds pretty hokey. Or hoaxy, as it were.

The family, including the Balloon Boy himself, had been featured on ABC’s “Wife Swap” and numerous CNN iReport videos.

Meanwhile, a commenter on the blog Althouse notes that the father, who was the designer of the balloon, should have known a boy as big as Falcon couldn’t be in it.

Writes the commenter:

“[The craft] ain’t that big. Authorities say it was a 20′ round, 5′ deep object. If you use the basic math and note that it bevels from center to edge..you get a total gas area of PiXradius squared (10 feet) X ~3.3 feet effective depth. Or 1037 ft3.

Which gives this object a lifting capacity of 66.3 lbs. BUT the bozo who built this has to subtract the weight of the ballon material, his homemade wood and metal base which is likely 30-40 lbs…to get his payload capacity…which Richard Heene probably knows to a gram, since he built the thing. So we are talking bout 26-36 lbs lifting capacity to hoist his 7 year-old son into thin air. If it was fully loaded. But media reports say it was only half inflated when it “just took off”. (As it would be to allow gas to expand as the balloon rose several thousand feet for weather experiments.) Or, Heene should know – 13 to 18 lbs lifting capacity – maximum.”

To make matters worse for Heene, a series of embarrassingly insane YouTube videos he had posted previously are now getting more attention.

In one, Heene hosts a terribly named show called The Psyience Detective and repeatedly claims to have proof of life on Mars. The evidence? He can shout ‘IT’S A BONE’ really loudly.

In another, the Heene boys rap about pussies at the direction of their storm-chasing, apparently demented father. And it’s still better than the Jonas Brothers.

TMZ reports that Heene had repeatedly pitched the idea of a reality TV series starring his family. All major networks, including TLC, passed. Hellllo, motive!

Some choice YouTube comments on the incident:

yea to be exposed on air is bad enough, but to be exposed during an interview with wolf is the epitome of shame in the journalism world….the only thing lower is if a monkey or a dog was conducting the interview lol

The father is clearly lying. He is stumbling all over his words. He pretended not to understand the question (twice, no less) to buy himself time, and when he realized he couldn’t deflect the question he got incredibly defensive. If Falcon really meant that he had been asked the question before, what would be the problem asking him what he meant?

Update: In a follow-up interview earlier today on The Today Show, Falcon vomits from the pressure on-air and “cold as ice” Meredith Vieira doesn’t even react. The interview was the third the family conducted this morning. Looks like somebody loves the cameras.

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