My shallowest post ever: my take on the Jon & Kate debacle

When a badly broken ankle confined to me to my bed and to my house earlier this year, I spent an inordinate amount of time watching Jon & Kate Plus Eight, something that I wouldn’t have done before I got hurt and certainly haven’t had time to do since I went back to work full-time in the early Spring. Still, I developed an odd attachment to the show – probably because there was a time when I had four kids under the age of five and I could relate to some of what the Gosselins experienced.

Mostly, though, I watched because I really thought those kids were adorable. They were cute as toddlers and just kept getting cuter and cuter as pre-schoolers. I have a feeling the filming is ending when they’re at the pinnacle of cuteness, which is a good thing.

Honestly, I found Jon and Kate and their antics to be distracting from the beginning, but I must admit that I got sucked in along with millions of other viewers. I cringed when Kate would tell Jon not to “breathe so loud” and when she’d chastise him constantly, no matter what he did. She already had eight kids to mommy and boss around; did he really need to treat Jon like a ninth kid?

When the fervor of their crumbling relationship hit the tabloids, I was spending quite a bit of time in physical therapy and I’ll admit right here (but nowhere else!) that I would look forward to my 12 minutes of TENS therapy, People magazine in hand, drooling over the gossip like the rest of the gossip-crazed reality show addicts out there. (No wait – this was the only reality show I watched… that doesn’t make me an addict, does it?)

And now, six months later, the whole Jon and Kate thing is still in the news! So here’s my take – especially after watching TLC’s interview with whiney, delusional Kate last Monday:

1. Jon is right to put an end to filming. He is correct in his assertion that the kids are being exploited and that it’s gotten to the point that it’s detrimental to the kids.
2. Yes, he signed a contract and yeah, he should be a good citizen and abide by it. But his protectiveness of his kids and his belief that the whole media frenzy is causing harm obviously outweighs his sense of legal obedience. There’s something kinda admirable about that.
3. Kate, on the other hand, seems to care only about herself and her celebrity status. My god, she doesn’t resemble the Kate that started down this road in any way – physically or behaviorally. It’s obvious that she’s in this for herself, kids be damned. I find that disgusting.
4. When asked why she doesn’t just quit the limelight, she said because her kids “deserve life handed to them on a silver platter” and that she must keep herself and her kids in the limelight because that’s the only way to pay the bills. Really? Are you frikkin’ kidding me?
5. I think Kate should go back to school, get a degree, and go to work. If she wants to do occasional appearances with the kids, fine, but limit it to twice a year and the rest of the time work for a living like the rest of us. The kids are in school; this is a very viable option – and would probably repair quite a bit of “future damage” when the kids start understanding and looking back at the whole media craziness.
6. The kids should be everyone’s primary focus. They are not the ones who messed everything up and, although they are why there was a show and why there’s money and fame in the first place, they don’t deserve to be burned because things went so terribly wrong. Right now they need a normal life. It’s the ONLY thing, I believe, that might save them from having some major issues as they grow up from being adorably cute and naive, to being kids who blame themselves and their parents and the media for some real tragedy.
7. I think both Jon and Kate should legally agree to take the media completely out of theirs and their kids’ lives for at least a year. They have enough money to live comfortably for a year, don’t they?

And there you have it – my absolute shallowest post ever! I feel so cheap.