Lessons from Honey Boo Boo

Alana Thompson, cast member of “Toddlers and Tiaras,” child pageant star and the Honey Boo Boo Child YouTube sensation, has her own reality television show.

Wednesday nights on TLC are home to the riveting redneck antics of the Thompson family. From cheese puffs for breakfast to trawling the aptly-named “Kuntry Stoe,” the Thompson family’s success represents our current fascination with being better than everyone else.

The opening title says it better than my words ever could. The camera calmly pans across a smiling, cheerful family. Suddenly a loud fart rents the air, and the illusion is destroyed as everyone in the family clearly smells it but denies having dealt it.

They make fools of themselves, and I’m sure they are paid very good money for it.

And why shouldn’t they? If I could be paid to fart and eat cheese puffs, I would.

In exchange for cash, the Thompson family willingly validates the destructive lifestyle of the typical American family.

But the idea that the Thompson family is somehow being fooled by its producers into looking like idiots against their will is an insult to what intelligence they do have. Being comfortable with one’s lifestyle is not the same as being ignorant of the way the rest of the country lives.

Of course the Thompsons know how they look to the rest of the world. If they didn’t, they would fail to understand why anyone would pay to see their hilarious lives in the first place.

The difference, both to the Thompsons and to any other reality show family, must be that they simply don’t care. And for that, they should be commended.

If nothing else, reality television shows should remind us that we, like the
Thompsons, are far from perfect, and we should take pride in that imperfection.

Alana’s mom, June, says it best in one of the show’s first episodes. “You either like us, or you don’t like us. Either way, we don’t care.”

If I’m being entirely honest, June, I don’t like you or the life you have built for your children very much at all. However entertaining you may be, a cheese puff has never been considered a balanced breakfast. Spelling and math are clearly not your strong points. And I won’t even touch the lifelong self-image issues you have ingrained in your pageant-crazed daughters.

But, like you said, you don’t care. And I think that’s something this country could use a lot more of.

­— drlreed@indiana.edu