Jon & Kate + 8 = Who Cares?

News outlets, both traditional and web-based, have been closely following the Jon & Kate drama unfold. Most of you probably know who Jon and Kate are. I’m writing this post assuming that you don’t.

“Jon & Kate + 8” is a reality program on TLC that follows Jon and Kate Gosselin and their eight kids. Jon and Kate aren’t celebrities, or at least they weren’t before the show started. They’re just a married couple who, through fertility treatments, had twins, and through another round of fertility treatments, had sextuplets. Jon and Kate have no extraordinary talents or skills. They are on television because, essentially, Kate’s womb is an over achiever. For the record, Kate underwent fertility treatments because she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome. That’s the same thing Susan was diagnosed with in 2000, for which Susan also underwent the same fertility treatments, which led to Mason. Had the cards (eggs) fallen a different way, it could have been Susan and I on TLC earning $75,000 per episode. Personally I think we were the luckier couple.

I’m not particularly a fan of “Jon & Kate + 8”, but as someone who watches TLC quite often, the show is unavoidable. (That’s my way of saying, “I’m not a fan of the show, but I’ve watched it.”) To get an idea of what the show is like, imagine the most out of control kids birthday party you’ve ever had to sit through. Every episode is pretty much like that, and I’m sure the Gosselin’s lives are pretty much like that every day. There is a limited amount of calm that can be achieved in a house with two eight-year-olds, six five-year-olds, a couple of nannies and a television crew, and that chaos is captured and broadcast on a weekly basis. Additionally, it is made pretty clear each week that Kate thinks Jon is an idiot, and she treats him as such by scolding him, belittling him, and talking down to him on national television. Personally I would have been out of there about six kids ago, but that’s just me.

So, on with the drama. Reports began swirling a month or two ago that Jon was spotted with another woman. If that is true, Jon is as stupid as Kate thinks he is; along with the film crew that lives in their house 3 days a week, the Gosselins are hounded by paparazzi every time they leave the house. I doubt either of them can wipe their butts without having a camera man and a make up artist present, so if Jon really is having an affair, I hope he’s smarter than he looks on television. Shortly after Jon’s reported affair, tabloids turned the tables and accused Kate of an improper relationship with her bodyguard. The two of them have both publicly denied their public affairs, but that hasn’t stopped their in-laws from appearing on the news and dishing the family’s private dirt.

All of this drama has taken place over the past two months, which fell in between seasons four and five of the show. Ratings went through the roof for the season 5 premiere, which took place last weekend. Based on the commercials and clips I saw (I didn’t watch the whole thing), season 5 is going to chronicle the dissolution of the Gosselin’s marriage. From what I saw it doesn’t look like things are going to go well. For example in the past, Jon and Kate were filmed together on their couch, commenting on the show. On the latest episode, their parts were filmed separately, one at a time.

Meanwhile, TLC executives are, no doubt, giving one another high-fives as ratings continue to soar.

I feel sorry for the Gosselins. It’s easy to say “they asked for it!” but I doubt any of us non-celebrities (which they were, not so long ago) could imagine what being thrust into the public eye would really be like. Depending on the source, the family makes somewhere between $60k and $75k per episode. Figure in the money the couple makes from their speaking engagements and Kate’s two best-selling books based on her family, and the Gosselins have netted well over a million dollars.

I can hear myself as a kid saying, “I would do anything for a million dollars!” I was wrong. My privacy and my family are worth more than that.

Way more.