The Case for 'Honey Boo Boo': Shame on Us

So I’m flippin’ through the channels the other night and come across this show everyone’s talking about.  The "Honey Boo Boo" show.  I’ve never seen a reality show in my life.  Honest.  The Real Housewives of … Someplace,  Keeping Time with the Carpasians,  Survivor: Jersey City – none.  Don’t interest me.  And this one?  Yipes!  From what I had heard it was either the cream on the top or the scum on the bottom of the barrel.  Either way,  it was awful.

Well,  against my better judgment I decided to watch a few minutes.  And then a few more.  Before I knew it I had watched two full episodes.

Was it good?  No.  Was it bad?  Yes.  But not for the reasons I had been hearing about from everyone.  Better to tell you what I saw :

I saw a very active,  uninhibited,  sweet little girl who lived with her family in a modest home somewhere in Georgia. 

I saw a mother who was rough around the edges to be sure,  no formal education it seemed but not the stupid cretin she was portrayed to be by the cynical,  oh so hip,  producers.  I saw a mother who loved her children and respected them and who got the same in return from them.

I didn’t see a mother who was living vicariously through her daughter as she planned the next child beauty pageant for Boo Boo,  but someone who sincerely saw the pageant as a creative outlet for her rambunctious and wonderfully silly little girl.

I saw a family,  a nuclear family,  the kind of family we’re all so obsessed with.  The real deal – Oh,  never mind.  They’re white trash. 

I saw the producers,  with their rancid,  maggot ridden minds,  make it a point that Mama Boo Boo and her family couldn’t pronounce the word spaghetti so they called it  ‘skettis’  And we all laughed – at the family’s expense – at how they could tell the  ‘skettis’  was done when you throwed it against the wall and it stuck.  Well,  shame on us,  shame on us all.

This is typical behavior from the prejudiced,  hipper than the room a**holes who come from out of town and decide that they’re Jane Goodall and you’re nothing more than dressed up chimps rolling around in our own feces. 

If you’ve ever watched this show and laughed at this child and her mother and their family I want you to think back to when your kids were little,  four,  five,  six years old.  What did you and your kids call spaghetti?  I know what I  and my kids called it.  And it wasn’t  ‘spaghetti’. 

If some jerk from L.A. came to my house when I was raising my two boys and filmed us for a week,  I venture to guess that they wouldn’t have had a clue as to what we were talking about or saying.  At that age,  almost everything you do and say to a child,  and they’re reply,  is a code.  That’s part of the fun of parenting.   

But of course that twisted turd from L.A. wouldn’t come to Philadelphia to do that.  He’d head straight to Georgia.  If he did,  and I didn’t like what I saw that night on TLC?  Well,  let’s just say he’d have to sleep with one eye open for the rest of his life.  But,  you know,  guys like that underestimate everybody.  I don’t know but I wouldn’t screw with the people in Georgia like that,  come home to Beverly Hills and not expect to find something large and hairy and bloody under my covers the next morning.    

Mama Boo Boo held out for more money before shooting another season.  Yea,  right.  She’s a simpleton.  And I honestly believed her when she said that if it all came to an end tomorrow she and her family would just get go on with their lives as if nothing happened.  Unlike the Carpasians,  this family is truly a family,  not a collection of over made up and under dressed megalomaniacs fighting for the camera’s attention. 

You know,  I wouldn’t be surprised if,  after she gets a few hundred thousand in the bank,  Mama Boo Boo shuts down the whole enterprise.  Enough money so that she won’t have to worry about money anymore.  That’s a recurring theme in the show,  a theme that will obviously change,  but from what I’ve seen,  this isn’t woman who is going to blow her windfall on solid gold shitters and pet therapists. 

In the end I see Mama Boo Boo sending her kids to college,  or trade school or beauty pageant school or … whatever.  But I don’t see her spending a dime on herself.  To me,  that’s the crux of the matter.  She’s a mom.  Like my mom.  Like your mom.  That trumps everything.

And who gets the last laugh? 

I was going to say Mama Boo Boo but … Believe it or not,  unlike the snickering us,  she’s just got too much class.

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