The beleaguered stars of TLC show “Jon and Kate Plus Eight” are making an announcement on tomorrow night’s show.
Whatever will it be? That Jon is getting hair plugs? That Kate is going to Control Freak school?
I don’t know, but is it the world’s healthiest thing for your marriage to raise your eight children in front of a national television audience?
Don’t get me wrong. I blame most of the craziness involving these folks on the suckerfish of the news media, the exploiters in the paparazzi and the corporate nitwits who pay them. (I’m looking at YOU, US Weekly, People, and all your cheap facsimiles we see at the grocery store.) From what I’ve observed, the Gosselins are good people who took an opportunity from CBS and ran with it. As a result, all eight of their delightful children will be able to go to college and have opportunities 99 percent of kids don’t get. That’s fantastic for them.
I’m sure the parents, looking back, probably would have done a few things differently. Unfortunately, both of them are now under the halogen lamps of the 24 hour news cycle, so the simple act of spanking one of their kids for being disobedient has now become national news. (And come on, people…the very fact that the spanking of one’s child has become a story covered by ABC News is illustrative of how seriously MESSED UP we have become as a society, but that’s another blog.)
So what is a right-thinking person to do? By watching tonight, are we feeding the beast that is media exploitation of a family? Are the Gosselins part of the problem, or is this just the unforeseen backlash that can occur when one puts their family in the public eye?
I don’t have an answer, but I thought it would be good to ask the questions. We’ll watch. We always watch.
But I think we should pray for everyone involved before we do.
Moe Lane
PG DeFreese
Victoria Coates
Daniel Horowitz
Dan Spencer
The blame rests on the citizens
dave_in_atl (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 11:49AM EST (link)Hate to say it, but the blame rests solely on us as citizens. If we stopped watching this stupid reality crap they would stop producing it.
The perverse nature of watching someone elses life on TV is one of the most screwed up things about society these days in my opinion.
If you don't come, they won't build it.
Achance (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 11:55AM EST (link)It is incomprehensible to me that so many people value their time, their life, so little as to actually sit and watch most of what is on television.
In Vino Veritas
In just about all these reality shows, there's a common theme:
janis (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 1:25PM EST (link)These people are so screwed up that it makes the viewer feel completely good about their own life and problems. The really destructive thing about that, though, is that if you put your baseline of what’s normal against how these and other creepy people behave, you’ve set the bar so low that you’d have to be pretty pathetic not to measure up to it.
Having said that, I don’t watch reality shows beyond “Dancing with the Stars” because that’s at least one show where you actually see people working really hard to achieve something and they don’t seem to try to undercut each other in their efforts.