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Honey Boo Boo: Does her salary make her holler?

Honey Boo Boo –  6-year-old reality TV heroine – is making big bucks to live her life before TLC cameras. There's guilty pleasure in seeing her succeed.

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TLC/Insider
A screen shot of Alana Thompson, a.k.a. 'Honey Boo Boo.'
  • By Monitor Staff

As the claws of reality TV rake the ever younger, ever more innocent, the saga of chubby 6-year-old Alana Thompson – a.k.a. Honey Boo Boo Child the eponymous heroine of TLC's "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" – is easy to take a guilty peek at now and then.

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This week's Boo Boo eruption on entertainment websites involves just how much she earns. If the little girl's most famous line - "A dollar makes me holler" - is true, there's probably a lotta hollah going on, suggest the reports. The Hollywood Reporter says that Boo Boo's family gets between $2,000 and $4,000 an episode; TMZ quotes Boo Boo's mom June Shannon saying they get "way more." After all, her show did beat the Republican National Convention last week in cable ratings, with close to 3 million viewers the night of Aug. 29.

The best explanation of why this kid is so compelling is Modern Parenthood's Lisa Suhay's recent blog. Suhay parses the stew of issues from class consciousness to body image in explaining her own guilty pleasure in watching.

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