Editor's Note: From time to time, I feel the need to include personal opinion columns. This is one of those moments.
I read a rather offensively elitist and myopic item yesterday in the Washington Post decrying the dumbing-down of America at... the hands of a seven-year old named Alana.
Kathleen Parker, in her
"Can't we aim higher than 'Honey Boo Boo'?," seems to labor mistakenly under the belief that American households and the televisions contained therein only receive one channel, TLC, and on said network, only the programme called, "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo."
I might be in the minority, but both the television in my family home and that in Matt's apartment do get a range of programming options provided by a number of channels. Indeed, no one has ever entered my domicile and, on pain of death, forced me to watch Mama June, Honey Boo Boo, Sugar Bear, or any of the rest of the hilariously nicknamed family parade through their daily, if over-exaggerated, lives.
While we might ridicule these people as common, white trash, or idiots, I think that those who do are much mistaken.
Parker writes,
"Such diversions are reminiscent of carnival sideshows of my childhood - the bearded lady (who perhaps suffered hormonal excesses) or the fat lady (whose rolls of adipose were spectacularly offensive and, for her, no doubt tragic). Responsible parents steered their children away not only to protect them but also, because we were taught, it wasn't right to enjoy the misfortunes or disadvantages of others."
Pardon my asking, but which misfortunes and disadvantages is Ms. Parker speaking of? Is it the $20,000 per episode that the family makes from living before the cameras? Is it that the family's eldest daughter has borne a child outside of wedlock? (After all, that is so rare and shameful these days...) Or might it be that Ms. Parker sees these uneducated, dare I call them "average" people are somehow a little lower than the angels she deigns to keep in her company?
Yes, Mama June is overweight. Another rarity in 2013. Is she filming commercials advocating overeating? Not the last time I checked. Is June's plumpish physique something American women will begin aspiring to? Not hardly.
Yes, Mama June sugars up her daughter for said daughter's pageant performances. Show me the laws against giving children sugary drinks and I'll show you Kool-Aid, Coca Cola, and other Fortune 500 firms going out of business.
But, according to a
recent People magazine piece, Mama June is doing something very right: she's making sure that this ride on fame's tempestuous back provides for her family in a long-term way.
The funds brought in through the filming of their lives are deposited, so she says, directly into a trust fund, which will be inaccessible to the children until they turn 21. They do not live on, rely on, or play fast and loose with the money. According to the article, the family's bills are paid by her domestic partner's job as a contractor.
Their big ticket item purchase? Not a McMansion in a development. No, a used 2005 Ford Expedition.
Says June, "You're never gonna see me drive a Range Rover or a Mercedes. I'll drive one if someone else pays for it. Never gonna live above my means." Something tells me that neither of the tony automobile firms are clamoring for that image to grace the pages of next month's Vanity Fair.
Maybe we're overlooking something here. Could it be that these people are just decent human beings seizing on the opportunity of a lifetime? I mean, they might actually love each other as family units - however non-traditional - are supposed to do.
It's said that we all love watching a train-wreck as it happens. Are these people the paradigm of the upwardly-aspiring mobility of the American Dream? Not really. But something tells me I'd prefer to spend an afternoon in their household than that of some self-obsessed Yuppie hipster yearning only to be cool and have the next "best" thing.
Andy Warhol noted that we all get our fifteen minutes of fame. By putting on this three-ring circus, this family banks more in a couple episodes than most American families make in a year. Fair? No. The American dream? You bet. In having fun, tossing rolls of paper towels at each other's heads, and putting it all on film, these people know what's up. This whole crazy ride is, for them, a means to an end.
One day there will be a new so-called "low" in American television that is excavated out from underneath the current crop of reality programming. Personally, I don't see how a seven-year old having fun is worse than anything done to contestants once upon a time on shows such as "Fear Factor"... truly. Honey Boo Boo, we can all hope, will become educated and make something more of her life than as a member of "Where are they now: Child Stars" on E! network.
Until then, I will continue to marvel at the media's obsession with the Thompson/Shannon family unit and the accompanying claim that, just as rock-and-roll, Elvis' swinging pelvis, Marilyn Manson, and video games before them, these people will destroy America.
Dance on, Honey Boo Boo, and enjoy every minute of it. Just know to leave the stage before the stage leaves you.
