Honey Boo Boo’s Mom’s Boston Accent Is as Bad as You’d Expect

The latest commercial in Dish Network’s weirdly Boston-focused ad campaign features Mama June, the (in)famous mother of reality TV star Honey Boo Boo as she attempts and spectacularly fails at a Boston accent.

Mama June, whose very, very strong Georgia accent and folksy southern sayings form the heart of her TLC reality show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” sits in front of a camera and attempts to talk like she’s from Boston. The results are predictably horrendous. Someone has her read back phrases like “Madonna is not a stah. She’s a supahstah” and “more buttah, more bettah.” (Is that even a phrase?) She gamely attempts the accent but, as you might predict, just sounds like she’s playing a losing game of Chubby Bunny. (Don’t play Chubby Bunny at home, kids.)

Having had some success with their “Hoppah” ad campaign, which features Boston people screaming at each other about their Dish device, called a “Hopper” because it skips ads or something, Dish has decided to really bet the farm on this whole “Boston” thing. They’ve rolled out an entire website, TalkBoston.com, the conceit of which is that the Boston dialect must be learned like a second language. And they periodically feature unlikely celebrities doing terrible imitations of the patois.

Does this campaign appeal to us Boston residents? Does it appeal to anyone else? Does it lead any of us to buy Dish Network services? Who can say? The only certainty here is that Mama June from Honey Boo Boo is, in fact, terrible at imitating regional accents. Did you know TLC used to stand for “The Learning Channel”? Well, there you go. You learned something today.