Reader Request 2: Jon + Kate + 8 = ?

And now we shall begin the second portion of the reader request series, and the lucky winner is Casey! Yay!! I realize in my last entry I said I would write this the next day, and I did start to do so, but I hit some major writer's block half way through. It was the MJ memorial, I was just too emotionally drained because the mainstream media kept telling me how moving Paris' impromptu address was and showing it to me to remind me. I have now recovered, and finally have "We are the World" out of my head.

So let me preface this editorializing with some very important facts and disclaimers. First, I have only seen half of an episode of "Jon & Kate Plus 8," so my judgments are very narrowly based on what little I have seen, snippets that I have caught when my mom was watching it and what the people on the T.V. tell me to think about it. Secondly, recent population estimates put the world population at 9 billion by the year 2050. In the year 2050, if I haven't died of an aneurysm or fled to the wilderness to escape humanity, I will be 65 years old and will be just old enough to tell my children "I remember back in the day when Americans turned 65 and started collecting Social Security, but that was before the Earth was destroyed by the Baby Boomers. Thanks Mom and Dad." But that will be in Chinese and muttered under my breath while I am in a sweatshop working with all the other American slaves.

My first thought on the whole big shitstorm (that might not be a strong enough fecal weather event to accurately describe this...perhaps a shit-nami or shitblizzard of the century) surrounding this show is that it seems like the "Reality T.V." thing should be sooo totally over by now. I mean wasn't the first season of Survivor like after my freshman year in high school? Which was 1999-2000? I feel that we should move on to something else, although I don't know how much lower we can go at this point. Other than just watching TV fuzz, which might actually be preferable to some of the things that are being offered. I mean could I just get one scripted comedy or drama that isn't inane and could hold my attention? I promise I will watch, even the commercials so that the advertisers will be happy!

I also don't really understand the appeal of the show. I mean ostensibly, a majority of the people who watch it have their own families and children. I just find it odd that a parent who spends all day taking care of their real kids plops down on the couch in the evening and is like "Hmm, I think I'll watch these people 'parent' their kids! What a stretch for me..." I use the airquotes around the term parents with respect to John and Kate because while they are biologically the mother and father of those children, I debate if what they are doing to them is technically parenting. In my opinion it is at best exploitation and at worst prostitution.

So let's start at the very beginning shall we? A very good place to start indeed. Ma and Pa Gosselin...The only word that I can consistently come up with to describe these two is narcissistic. Actually it's two words, extraordinarily narcissistic. I suppose that it could be argued that all breeding is inherently narcissistic. I mean, two people set out to make little amalgamations of themselves to raise into adults who will survive them and keep them alive. Evolutionarily it makes sense. However, in nature if you can't breed, you don't. What makes Jon and Kate incredibly narcissistic is that they used In Vitro Fertilization because Kate had like cystic ovaries or her uterus was anti-baby or something, I'm not sure of the medical details. Perhaps her uterus was just being prophetic, it recognized that these people probably shouldn't be parents, so it put the kibash on it. The first time, it resulted in twins. After the twins, they were like "Hey, let's try for one more." First of all, it isn't normal that you wanted more kids after having twins. Most people wouldn't press their luck. They would take their two kids and go home and buy a minivan. Second, the definition of insanity is doing the EXACT same thing over again and expecting a different result. "Hmm, let's just go to the same fertility doctor that gave us one set of multiples and see if we can just get one this time." You can't do that and then be surprised when your uterus becomes a clown car. Not to mention that they probably spent a small fortune on trying to bring these little science experiments into the world. A world that is already teeming with children waiting to be adopted. It's like spending two thousand dollars on a puppy when there are 50 puppies at the kennel waiting to be adopted. I guess Jon and Kate had to have kids that looked just like them. I mean it would even have been the fashionable thing for them to do, go to a foreign, impoverished country and grab a few and you're just like Angelina or Madonna. But no, we had to spend a few Gs and get some super cute half-asian babies that will have Jon's receding hairline and Kate's penchant for harping...

So now Jon and Kate are stuck with the Plus 8. I mean, I don't think they realize how lucky they are that those sextuplets don't have more problems. The human body is a remarkable piece of machinery, but uteruses (is the plural uteri?) don't do litters of fetuses very well. There is only so much room and only so many nutrients to go around. I mean you're not a golden retriever. Higher order mammals have fewer fetuses and concentrate all the resources onto that one fetus. Mother Nature does not like to have her law and order violated and thrown in her face like that. It's not cool...

So where are we now..."normal" young couple Jon and Kate now have 8 little kids. Jon's a little on the schlubby side, his hairline is making a retreat to rear of the troops, and Kate pretty much looked how I expect someone who housed eight people in her body would look. Frumpy, tired and defeated. Here comes voyeuristic TLC, to do a documentary on how in the world you would go about dealing with all those babies. It's popular, but I would say that a show that features car accidents would be as well. Voyeurism has long been a favorite human pastime. I'm not really clear on how a couple of documentary features on TLC or Discovery Health turned into what J&K+8 is now, but I guess it was very popular? Plus, they were just like every American family, they had pancake breakfasts and went to the zoo and there were fights and tantrums, but at the end of the day it was all about the love and taking care of those adorable little hasian munchkins. Move over Donna Reed, eat some Jell-o Heathcliff Huxtable, America has a new happy, perfect family! Except that it's not 1950's television, filling our heads with mom and apple pie so that we didn't crap our pants because the Soviets were slowly pointing all of their nuclear weapons at us...

Having not really watched the show, I think that the whole situation can be understood by looking at the before and after pictures of Jon and Kate. You don't even need to bring the kids into it, just do a little split-screen action on those two crazy kids. Pre-show, Jon is the schlubby everyman, destined to be played in a movie about his life by Jim Belushi or that guy from King of Queens. Currently, he has diamond earrings in both ears and wears designer tees and clothes. He got hair plugs and started using hair product and has filled out his application for The Royal Douchebag Society (he's a shoo-in). Alright, well if I looked bad and then saw myself on national television, I would probably change a few things up. Pre-show, Kate was a casual mom who probably should have been nominated for What Not to Wear. Now she's a fashion maven, with perfect clothes, manicures, spray-tan and the world's most unfortunate hair cut. I mean seriously, what is with that. If America generally thinks that you are a hard-ass nag, it doesn't help change your image to go out and get the most angular, harsh cut with some of the least subtle highlights I have ever seen. You should have gone for a little pixie cut or the Dorothy Hamill or anything that isn't what is currently happening. It's like business on the left, masochism on the right. Also, I'm not entirely sure that it is actually hair. It seems like more of a helmet, which is probably smart. With eight kids, you are bound to get hit with something along the way. This way, you can be sure that you won't get a concussion. It's probably made of teflon or something that is easy to wipe down at the end of the day. She also had plastic surgery, but if you saw the picture of her stomach after having six babies in it, you would probably do it too. I mean it looked like she had an ass on her front..like it literally had an ass-like furrow and probably could have worn at least a B-cup bra. It was not pretty.

So the show is a runaway success, and Ma and Pa Gosselin start milking that cash cow for all it is worth. I guess I don't really blame them, I mean if you don't make a ridiculous amount of money there is just no way that you can afford to have eight kids. You'll have to sell one or more on the black market. They are getting like $75,000 an episode and they move into a giant ass house, and they are at the height of their fame, on top of the world! From the episode I watched, the show now just appears to be a giant advertisement for whatever product the family was given for free. This week's sponsor was "Crooked Houses," some company that builds whimsical play houses for kids. I just googled it, and first, these houses cost between $1300-4500. You could have just gotten a refrigerator box and put it in the yard, that's what most of us normal kids got. Second, there is no "as seen on Jon and Kate" mention on the main page, as the company is probably attempting to distance itself from the train wreck. I have no problem with product placement, but two moments stood out as disturbing. First, the kids were running around in "Crooked House" t-shirts. By most standard definitions, you have turned your kid into an adorable, hasian billboard. I mean prop that kid up on the side of the highway and it would pretty much be the same thing. The second part was when they sat all the kids down and the producer was like "So, how much do you like your crooked houses?" A testimonial? From six year olds? Is Kate off camera saying "If you don't say how much you love the crooked house, mommy doesn't get paid, and if mommy doesn't get paid she can't afford to keep all of you..." How is this even remotely reality? When I was little I wasn't given free stuff and then forced to say how much I liked it. Well, actually, when my relatives would give me an ugly sweater for Christmas, I would have to lie through my teeth and say "Wow, I really like the purple sequins! I will definitely wear this," but that is a standard rite of passage and an important character building exercise.

These greedy narcissists are pretty much whoring out their children, so that they can get insanely wealthy and get lots of attention. Sitting in her mansion, wearing her designer sunglasses, Kate says "We're doing all of this for the kids! To give them a better life...." No, that's what you tell yourself so that you can sleep at night. The real reason is because you are a self-centered glutton who is gobbling up everything that she can while there is a feast to be had. If you really wanted the best for your kids you would stop this insanity, take your marital problems off national television and be done with the show.

What you have successfully done Jon and Kate, is to begin to raise eight future "former child stars," and that is a golden pathway to happiness, wealth and satisfaction. I'm sorry, did I say that it was a golden pathway? I misspoke, it's definitely not. Here's how it's going to go down, it's not as if we haven't seen this before. I mean don't you people get E!?...if you don't, google "True Hollywood Story," and learn grasshopper. So, the TLC show runs for another year or so, but it is now Jon, Kate and Eight or Jon, his mistress, his ex-wife and estranged children or something, and the Gosselin fifteen minutes get stretched to their limit, as long as America is still interested. The kids hit their awkward pre-pubescent phase and America is disgusted by their acne and braces and hey, look, another freakishly large family has a show and the audience moves on. The kids don't understand why they don't get free crooked houses or why no one knows or cares who they are. They come into young adulthood. They will try to fill the holes in their souls with drugs. Desparate to regain the spotlight, one or more of your children will star in adult films titled "Octopussy" or "Jon and Kate Do Eight." There will be naked photographs and rehab. I hope you two are at least saving some of this J&K+8 money in some sort of trust that will be used to pay for the years of therapy your life choices for them will require. All of the children will then write tell-all books and be featured on "Where are they now?" vignettes on entertainment shows.

I mean based on the over-population of the planet, I am inclined to hate all uberbreeders, so don't feel like that freaky Jesus family with 18 kids, the other giant families and the octomom are getting off, but it just bothers me that these people are all over the media telling us that it's not about them it's about the kids, and how they hate losing their privacy and what has happened to them, all the while still taking all the free crap and money. I thank you and your family for consuming inordinant amount of resources and contributing to the irrevocable raping of Earth, it's really super.