In October, a Colorado couple fooled the American media into believing that their 6-year-old son had possibly taken off in a homemade helium balloon, setting off a police search that received nationwide coverage. By the time the little boy was "discovered" hiding in the couple's attic, a Japanese TV crew had made it to their home and interviewed the mother, Mayumi Heene, a Japanese national. She expressed relief that her son was safe and asked the crew to tell her parents back in Gunma Prefecture that everything was OK. At the time I thought it was strange. Why doesn't she just call her parents herself?

It all turned out to be a hoax designed to make the Heene family famous and get some TV producer interested in using them for a reality show. The Heenes, who met at acting school, had already appeared on one reality show, "Wife Swap," so Mayumi understands what TV crews want. A whole new species of performer has emerged in the United States with the mainstreaming of reality programming over the last 15 years or so. The rich couple who talked their way into that White House dinner several weeks ago also belong to this species. They got in by just acting as if they belonged.

Japanese TV pioneered the use of average people back in the 1970s, but Western-style reality shows are different. On series like "Survivor," "Big Brother" and "Temptation Island," average people are thrust into situations that the producers believe will generate drama, and the average people, who usually get hired through auditions, know what's expected of them. That's why you see a lot of unpleasant behavior. At the end of their episodes of "Wife Swap,"where Mayumi and another mother changed places for a week, the Heenes gleefully insulted their opposite couple and the way the couple raised their children.