FALSE ESSAY EARNS CONCERT TICKETS

Jump to Comments

This is wrong on so many levels.

An essay submitted on behalf of a six year old girl in a contest for tickets to a Hannah Montana concert contained a blatant lie told by the girl’s mother, namely that the girl’s father had been killed fighting in Iraq.

GARLAND, Texas (al-AP) — An essay that won a 6-year-old girl four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert began with the powerful line: “My daddy died this year in Iraq.”

While gripping, it was not true — and now the girl may lose her tickets after her mom acknowledged to contest organizers it was all a lie.

The sponsor of the contest was Club Libby Lu, a Chicago-based store that sells clothes, accessories and games intended for young girls.

The saga began Friday with company officials surprising the girl at a Club Libby Lu at a mall in suburban Garland, about 20 miles northeast of Dallas. The girl won a makeover that included a blonde Hannah Montana wig, as well as the grand prize: airfare for four to Albany, N.Y., and four tickets to the sold-out Hannah Montana concert on Jan. 9.

The mother had told company officials that the girl’s father died April 17 in a roadside bombing in Iraq, company spokeswoman Robyn Caulfield said.

This is absolutely despicable on the mother’s part. She knowingly told a lie in order to win his daughter tickets to a concert. The tickets deserve to be taken away.

Here’s what Mom had to say:

“We did the essay and that’s what we did to win,” Priscilla Ceballos, the mother, said in an interview with Dallas TV station KDFW. “We did whatever we could do to win.”

Not a shred of remorse. None whatsoever. We did whatever we could to win. Apparently lying and cheating is justified in Ceballos’s eyes. Just shameful. Another product of 40 years of moral relativism. The ends justify the means. Blah-blah-blah.

Her scheme was unmasked when they submitted the name of a soldier supposedly killed in Iraq, Sgt. Jonathon Menjivar. The Pentagon said it had no record of such a soldier as KIA in Iraq. Exactly how the scheme was unmasked isn’t known, but presumably contest organizers must have tried to verify the information with the Pentagon. From there, the story began to unravel.

What’s more, it’s an insult to every member of the U.S. military who actually has made the supreme sacrifice for his or her country.

We could say this mother ought to be ashamed of herself, but it’s difficult if not impossible to shame people who have no shame. And clearly Priscilla Ceballos has no sense of shame. Organizers of the promotion are considering taking the tickets away from the girl. Well, duh. That should take all of five seconds to decide.

I’d like to see charges of fraud brought against the mother for her deception. Since her scheme involved the U.S. Mail, those would have to be federal charges of mail fraud. Priscilla Ceballos is in need of a serious attitude adjustment. Perhaps a trip to a federal penitentiary might be just the ticket.

From ScaredMonkeys via BlogsOfWar:

THEY DO NOT DIE SO THAT 6 YEAR OLDS CAN WIN HANNA (sic) MONTANA TICKETS!!! …

How reprehensible could one be to write an essay providing the impression that the story was real and that a 6 year old girl’s dad died while serving his country in Iraq. You wrote the essay with the knowledge that this would tug on emotions and heart strings and win. Nothing more, nothing less. You would dare win some thing as stupid and useless as Hanna Montana tickets off the blood of US soldiers! How dare you! These men and women are hero’s … you are as far away from that as it gets.

This mother is a disgrace. God forbid she have to experience the pain and anguish that so many mothers and daughters have had to go through in the USA of actual fathers and dads who died in Iraq

From the Fox affiliate (Channel 4) in Dallas-Fort Worth comes information via the girl’s grandmother that the girl’s father is indeed named Jonathan Menjivar and that he is alive but lives in another town and apparently is not a member of the U.S. military.

Update: the tickets have been revoked.

A 6-year-old girl who won four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with an essay that falsely claimed her father died in Iraq won’t be going to the show after all.

The contest’s sponsor, Club Libby Lu, withdrew the prize on Saturday and awarded it to another unnamed winner.

“With this decision, we hope to revive the intended spirit of the contest, which was designed to make a little girl’s holidays extra special,” Club Libby Lu chief executive Mary Drolet said in a statement Saturday.

Good for the sponsor.

11 Comments

Filed under Children, Crime, Parenting, Society