Honey Boo Boo

Ah, I knew there was a reason I stopped watching reality TV. Like one on the people who the author quotes in his discussion, I too stopped watching reality TV.  I shared the repulsion in what TV has become, but I have to say I did not go as far as to remove my cable.  Keeping the TV off is a safer option only because my step dad lives most of his existence glued to the television... Anyway, Honey Boo Boo...
"They know there is little America likes more than judging fat folks–especially fat women who don’t have the decency to hate themselves for being fat; poor people and poor parents; Southerners and young women who have sex outside of marriage." 

So if anyone stopped reading beyond this point they would believe this article was entirely dedicated to Honey Boo Boos overweight mother. Its the entire basis of the conversation, that and how little pride she must have raising her children the way she does.  This quote from the author I think does a good job of summing up most of the biases Americans have about themselves.  We never want to admit we are talking about ourselves and that we are better, never one to stoop so low and so on, but in reality we are what we eat.  We eat people for being different, eat as in chew em up and spit em out so they feel a little worse than before, maybe then they will have some common sense, or at least thats the perceived reason why we criticize. And once we have made someone else's life a living hell we forget that we have just brought this upon ourselves.  Its funny the author says theres little more that we as americans like better, and his absolutely right.  However, let us not forget that we are making fun of ourselves the epidemics that the United States has become known for over the past thirty years.  Obesity is a national epidemic, girls having children before they are 17 is a national epidemic, and we push it away to the rednecks of Georgia.  
So, how many people remember that show "The Secret Life of the American Teenager"? I hardly ever here that show criticized although it deals with one of the same issues as previously mentioned.  Oh but wait, the mother isn't 300 pounds, she is a poor little white girl who made one mistake and receives national sympathy.  Oh yeah she's not a redneck so she must be intelligent.  Well we should be making fun of ourselves for this one because it tells everyone else in the world that American teenagers are immoral and sex crazed. I don't hear the mother of that teenager being criticized about  her parenting because she was not watching what her teenager was doing 24/7. 

 "The comments above are revealing of one interesting thing: Some folks may be made uncomfortable by “Honey Boo Boo” because it challenges their association of thin, shining, educated middle-classness with whiteness and Southern accents, fatness and poverty with blackness."

This makes me wonder if Honey Boo Boo's family was black if they would have ever made it to television screens across America.  That may have been far too taboo even for todays consumer market. So all those girls in the south aren't really southern belles ? Who would have thought it was possible for someone not to fit the traditional mold.  I wonder if so many hate this show because it does what the author says it does, it challenges our ideas about the neat little categories we try to shove people into.  We as humans attack what is different, we don't take the time to understand, because we our instinctive creatures. We see difference as weakness and by extension to Darwin the survival of the fittest the outsider will first be left to die because it is different.  Different is a threat and we respond to threats by explaining it away, and blocking it from our rational thought. we expect black southerners to be in the gutter because that it what we are taught but a white gutter family, oh something is wrong with them. Ok, the head of the family she's fat thats why they are the way they are and their children are the way they are.