By Michael Sullivan

Step aside, sex slave trafficking. There’s a new breed of for-profit youth exploitation to hit the scene and it’s perfectly legal!

That’s right: child-driven publicity stunts! Traditionally, when people think of publicity stunts, they think of celebrities—Britney Spears’ infamous one-day marriage or Paris Hilton’s sex tape, for example.

Only today, however, are non-celebrities rocketing their way to stardom via the technique. You need only watch one episode of Toddlers in Tiaras to know what I mean. Enter the Exploitation of Offspring and their Parental Pimps.

The Horrible Heenes

Because it wasn’t dangerous enough to strap their three kids into the back seat while mom and dad went storm chasing, Richard and Mayumi Heene recently put one son directly in the line of fire to help them attain the American dream: having a reality show!

For the few, if any, who don’t know, on Thursday, Oct. 15, the Heenes contacted a local news affiliate (note: not the police) to say that they had strong reason to believe their 6-year-old son Falcon was aboard a homemade balloon drifting along the Colorado skyline. The balloon soon landed, empty, and a few hours later, Falcon was “found” hiding in the garage attic safe and sound.

Richard and Mayumi weren’t exposed for being the liars they are until that night, on Larry King Live, when Falcon confessed he thought his actions were “for a show.” And they were—the world quickly learned that the Heenes had crafted a publicity stunt to groom themselves for a reality TV show, and may have received some outside monetary help.

“Falcon seemed to struggle under the media glare,” the Los Angeles Times said in a recent article—“vomiting during live interviews Friday morning with Diane Sawyer and Meredith Vieira.”

For growing children, particularly those at the ripe young age of six, parents are supposed to be a moral compass, instructing their offspring the differences between right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable.

Instead of following through on this obligation, however, Richard and Mayumi taught their children how to lie to a nation (which Falcon didn’t seem to stomach very well), and taught the nation that, with enough money and a good enough scheme, even you can grab international media attention and waste time, energy, tax dollars…on non-news.

The Krazy Katey Eights

When asked about his opinion of Richard Heene, Jon Gosselin of TLC hit "Jon & Kate Plus 8" (since turned "Kate Plus 8") told Entertainment Tonight, “People shouldn’t be able to get away with stuff like that.” True. Also, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

On June 22, Jon and Kate Gosselin announced to the world—on their show, of course—that legal procedures had been set in motion for their divorce. Their reasons were unclear at the time, but the gossip machine quickly began to speculate that Jon was cheating on his wife, making their marriage “irretrievably broken” as Kate put it in their divorce papers.

But what about the kids? That is, the Gosselins’ 9-year-old twin daughters and 5-year-old sextuplets. Well, apparently, they haven’t been taking it well. Kate told Vanity Fair that her children have been acting out, and that they miss their father, but she’s “trying to give them the grace to see…[that] it’s all interconnected,” whatever the hell that means.

Ultimately, here’s the thing: when Sally and Harry Smith from down the street get divorced, they’re toddler James goes through a peculiar psychological trajectory; he wants to know, “What did I do to make my parents split?” Now imagine that same scenario on television and multiplied by eight.

What’s worse (and I don’t purport to be the biggest fan—I’ve only been able to stomach one episode, an entire hour devoted to a single plane ride that was borderline unwatchable) is every fight Jon and Kate have on their show stems from their children. The kids don’t need to speculate whether or not they drove their parents apart, they have televised evidence.

As former US Weekly editor Janice Min put it, we can all look forward to their psychological unraveling in “10, 15 years down the road [during] the E! True Hollywood Story: The Gosselin Kids.”

The Octomom
(nothing clever - her given name is scary enough)

In somewhat related news, Nadya “Octomom” Suleman told RadarOnline.com, “I kind of have a crush on Jon Gosselin.” Within seconds, TV executives began foaming at the mouth at the thought of some sick, reality show Brady Bunch variant.

On Jan. 26, 2009 Suleman, a former Los Angeles psychiatric (haha) technician, gave birth to eight children, two girls and six boys, in Bellflower, Calif. This little medical miracle was made possible by in-vitro fertilization. As the story goes, Suleman had six embryos left over from prior in-vitro treatments (which resulted in her six older children) and figured, “What the hell?, why not throw the rest of ‘em in? Lest they go to waste, of course.”

And the rest is history. Albeit, recent history.

So for those of you keeping count, that’s one mom (Suleman’s a divorcee), 14 kids, and zero jobs. With no source of income, the public became concerned that Suleman would become a burden on taxpayers. So what was the public response? Death threats!

That’s right, in the months between the Suleman octuplets’ births and now, three different public relations advisors have dropped Suleman as a client because of threats against agents’ lives. Great environment to raise a family in, eh?

But there is a happy ending to this story after all. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Suleman has landed a reality show in the UK. Which invites an important question: Did she get the TV show because of the kids, or did she have the kids to get the TV show? ‘Kind of like the chicken or the egg. Except twisted. Very twisted.

In Conclusion…

There’s a lesson to be learned here, fellow USC student. Aspiring to be the next John Carpenter or William Friedkin? Look no further than the news for inspiration! The most horrific things men and women do are done in the real world, not in fiction—to one another and to their own young alike. The plot for the next big slasher spec is sitting in the pages of today’s paper. It’s just on you to find it.