In 1968, Andy Warhol predicted that "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."

Pretty incisive for a guy who painted pictures of Campbell's soup cans for a living.

For a lot of people here in the 21st century, that prediction has become a mission statement.

It seems that everyone wants to be famous.

Or infamous.

Whatever, just so their face appears on one of the 927 channels offered on basic satellite dish.

The latest group to wear out their 15 minutes is the Hiney family.

(Yes, I know it's spelled "Heene," but I think "Hiney" is more accurate for this bunch.)

For those of you smart enough to have CNN surgically removed from your cable lineup, you might not know that this is the weirdo family which captured America's attention last Thursday while helicopters and news vans gave us endless footage of their large silver balloon floating across the Colorado sky with non-stop hype about the idea that their six-year-old boy had climbed inside.

Now I'm not knocking my TV news brethren, but I think it adds just one more log onto the fire of public sentiment which says that investigative journalism is nearly dead.

Back in the 1970's, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were able to wade through lies, deceit, obfuscation, bureaucracy, and the work of professional con men to figure out that president Richard M. Nixon was a crook and a liar.

(The rest of the world knew Nixon was lying because his lips were moving.)

Woodward and Bernstein were investigative journalism heroes.

Last Thursday, TV news reporters were outfoxed by a six-year-old professional hide and seek artist.

It was easier for them to believe that an annoying, hyperactive boy who appears to be the poster child for advocating corporal punishment had boarded an oversized Mylar birthday balloon, let loose its moorings, and was on his way back to Kansas to meet the scarecrow, the tin man, the cowardly lion, and Auntie Em.

The only thing missing was an in-studio interview with Toto.

Of course, the drama of watching the silver balloon float across TV screens is far more compelling than eight-second video loops of a kid hiding in a box in a garage.

I guess we should be thankful the drama unfolded in Colorado.

Had it originated just a little further south, say in New Mexico, the footage would have been billed as the latest arrival of aliens from another galaxy in search of their Roswell crash buddies.

It makes you wonder whether it's an industry requirement that TV reporters must trade in their common sense for a journalism degree, or if the cable news business simply draws those who never had any common sense to begin with.

(The best evidence is that if they possessed any common sense, news reporters would have steered away from a career which pays as little as journalism and gone on to pursue more lucrative careers in the hamburger-flipping industry.)

Now it appears that the whole kid-in-a-balloon thing was a hoax to promote the family's next reality show project.

Previously, the Hiney's had appeared on Wife Swap, a deplorable TV offering in which spouses are exchanged to show how entertaining it would be to mix members of families who have zero in common.

For those who aren't familiar with this excrement, the show features people who weren't quite disgusting and self-debasing enough to earn a spot on MTV's "Flava of Love."

For the Hiney family, that 15 minutes wasn't enough.

The funniest part of this elaborate hoax is that the Hiney patriarch wasn't smart enough to figure out that you don't put the future of your family's fame in the hands of a six-year-old whose attention span can't get him through a 30-second interview without climbing all over his dad like a spider monkey in search of head mites.

The kid outed the hoax on national TV, explaining the reason he didn't come out of hiding when he was called was because it was "for the show."

Obviously, the dad was a serviceable screenwriting hack, allegedly dreaming up this elaborate script, but has no talent as a director.

So this family's 15 minutes is drawing to a close.

For now.

But don't count the Hiney's out.

You're sure to see six-year-old Falcon any day now on a Lifetime Channel commercial for Ritalin.