Jon and Kate milk their hate

By: Beth Clothier

Posted: 6/24/09

OK, so I know everyone including myself is sick to death of hearing about Jon and Kate Gosselin of Jon and Kate Plus Eight fame, but it is because of the constant attention they have been receiving that I can't help writing about them today.

While at a friend's house Monday night we found ourselves sucked into watching TLC. After all, the ads being shown on the network at every commercial break during the week prior to the show promised that Jon and Kate would be making a big announcement this week, and what self-respecting voyeur would want to miss that?

Secretly I had hoped that they were going to cancel the show and try to work on their marriage. but of course, as I predicted, the announcement was that the couple were separating, followed by a screen bearing the statement that papers were filed on Monday to dissolve their marriage. And even though I have often been annoyed by the media's fascination with them, I couldn't help but feel incredibly sad about it, and not a little dirty.

Here were two people who had once been very much in love, whose biggest claim to fame was the fact that their use of fertility treatments resulted in the birth of twins followed by a round of sextuplets. Who, as my friend said, were likely overwhelmed by both babies and bills and likely saw the chance to have a television show as something of a godsend. After all, there would be more people around, and more money to provide for their family, and unbeknownst to them at the time, thousands of dollars of free goods and services given to them. And now, just a few short years later, the couple have been torn apart by the very thing they saw as an incredible opportunity. Probably the saddest thing of all is that instead of ending it, Jon and Kate are going to continue with the show. Not content to have let it break up their family, they are now going to exploit the event by filming the effect their separation and divorce will have on their children.

I have never really watched the show; in fact I have only seen perhaps a grand total of four or five episodes when at my friend's house, but even so it isn't hard to see how much they changed over time, and how much being in the spotlight and living this kind of "circus performer" life affected them.

There are so many more obligations when a network is relying on you to keep their numbers up, and the stress of raising eight children under the age of ten doubles (at least) when you are constantly surrounded by film crews or trying to shield your children from the paparazzi. And though Kate denied that having the show and becoming celebrities played no part in the breakdown of their marriage, I can't help but wonder what their lives would have been like without the constant intrusion of the greater viewing public.

I cannot understand our fascination with these people, or any other family with a so-called "reality" show, other than that we get to satisfy our voyeuristic tendencies and gawk at them from the privacy of our own homes. That we can compare our lives to theirs, and in cases such as these, revel in the misery of others. The destruction of a real family should not be entertainment, but unfortunately, it likely took seeing one unfold to make thousands of viewers come to this realization.