IT IS NOT ALL ONE WORLD

Along with apparently millions of other Americans, I watched the first two episodes of HERE COMES HONEY BOO-BOO on TLC (I think those letters stand for The Lunatic Channel) the other night. I couldn't help myself. It was a human train wreck of epic proportions that had to be seen to be believed.

This program is essentially white trash on steroids. The star, six-year-old Alana (aka "Honey Boo-Boo") is a fat little redneck dumpling who competes in toddler beauty pageants at the drop of a Confederate flag. She lives in very small town in the deep backwoods of Georgia with her mother, father and three sisters. Much to this family's credit, they do not live in a double-wide (which is about the only nice thing I can say about them). Their modest home does however, sit perilously close to a railroad and there doesn't appear to be a safety fence or sound barrier anywhere on the property. Loud and dangerous. How's that for a living environment?

Alana's father is a harried looking man nicknamed "Sugar Bear". He doesn't appear to have all of his teeth and he looks like he could use a good dose of hookworm medicine. He works seven days a week at an undisclosed job. He has to work that hard to pay for all of the beauty pageants that Alana competes in, along with other family expenses including a soon to arrive grand-baby by way of his  oldest, seventeen-year old daughter. There's no mention whatsoever of the father of this certain-to-be doomed child.

There are two other teen-age daughters, affectionately (and appropriately) nicknamed "Pumkin" and "Chubette". The mother of this unholy clutch of future brood mares is an enormous woman who (in one scene), tips the bathroom scales at over 300 lbs. She has multiple chins and an engorged throat (it's hideous) that recalls the villain Pouch (he could hide contraband within a specially designed pouch in his enormous neck/throat) that was in the old DICK TRACY comic strip.She appears to be an extreme couponer because their house is stockpiled with grocery and toiletry items in bulk. In addition, this mother-of-the-year candidly remarks that she had her first child when she was all of fifteen and had two kids by the time she was seventeen. She admits to dropping out of school and getting a GED (need help with the spelling of that?). Yep, she's 32-years-old and about to be a grandmother.

It gets worse. While dad works, the kids sleep in until mid-day or later then enjoy cheese balls for breakfast. The family goes shopping at the only auction on the planet that offers day-old bakery items and other food products that are about to go bad for sale. Really? A food auction? They're there to save money for the upcoming beauty pageant but they end up buying several boxes full of junk food.

In one episode, they attend the "redneck Olympics" and have the gall to complain about how other people are dressed. One daughter competes in a bobbing for pigs feet contest (the feet are in plastic tubs of dirty water).

In another episode, an etiquette teacher is called to the house to teach the girls proper manners (all of them fart continuously and the mother sneezes repeatedly on camera without covering her nose or mouth). The etiquette lesson fails.

Want more? Honey Boo Boo gets a pet pig named "Glitzy, she refers to a woman's vagina as a "biscuit" and is obsessed with winning the upcoming beauty pageant. 

Why watch this abomination? I can give no valid reason other than this.

I was most certainly not raised like this, nor were any of my family and friends. This is truly how some other people live and this kind of sick, sad, aberrant behavior is somehow endlessly fascinating to me because it is so far removed from my frame of reference and everyday reality.

And I thank my lucky stars for that.