Paying the Piper

by Jaimie Marzullo

It’s so tired, so predictable, that we almost wish it wasn’t so. Like a pimp in a fuzzy purple hat and a girl on a dog leash, or a drug dealer with diamond-encrusted fingers standing on a corner in the poorest part of the ghetto. Like Achilles, like Macbeth and perhaps most of all like Narcissus, Kate Gosselin and her erstwhile obedient husband are being felled by hubris.

We almost wish it wasn’t so. But not quite.

Because never is entertainment so entertaining as when the stakes are high. On the timeline of history, we’re but a hiccup removed from our forbears who tossed one another to lions in the Coliseum and watched the carnage while gorging upon bread and wine to the point of retching shamelessly in a stinking vomitorium. As were the frenzied crowds in Rome, we’re in control as the stakes for the Gosselin clan shoot to astronomical heights. From the comfort of our barcaloungers, with the flick of the remote and a few words tapped onto a gossip columnist’s comments section via laptop, our fat asses are swinging the strings of the Gosselin marionettes to see just what else we can make them do.

“This isn’t where we’re supposed to be,” the heavily made up Kate, complete in designer duds and sporting that bizarre, Sonic-the-hedgehog-like hairdo, protests in this season’s opener.

But it is, Kate. It is where you’re supposed to be.

Because here’s the rub… the train that’s driving the Gosselin family over a cliff was designed and sold by Jon and Kate themselves. Narcissism and pride prevented them from looking down the track; like parakeets, their eyes were riveted only to the shiny pretties that a life of contrived “reality” TV promised. Little thought did they give to the fact that when you sell yourself, your family, your home, your vacations, your body, and everything else you have to give to the public, and resign yourself to live on the handouts that public tosses at you – no matter how generous they may be – you’re not in control. You never were. In other words, you’re our bitch now.

There’s an easy out. End the show. Walk away. Sell the million-dollar house, pay cash for a modest, middle-class dwelling, go to a marriage counselor, focus on the kids and hunker down. It won’t take long for the public to lose interest. Trust me. Because honestly, Jon and Kate, without the masochistic spectacle that is your TLC show, neither of you are all that interesting.

We know that will never happen, though.

Not because of Jon, who is more pitiable than unlikable these days, in spite of his preening, passive-aggressive ways. Jon, whose humiliating claim to fame is being the most beleaguered, spineless husband in the western hemisphere, has been reduced to a mumbling, near-incoherent shell of the half-man he once was. His vague allusions to the controversy that swirls around him are uncharacteristically reserved… an indication of his unwillingness to subject himself to more scrutiny, or – could it be? – a carefully chosen strategy to deepen the intrigue? But no – he’s surely not that good an actor. Gone are the days when he could at least muster a sarcastic comeback under his breath as he scampered off to do his wife’s bidding. This Jon Gosselin looks tired and broken. And he doesn’t want this life anymore. He said it at the end of last season, and he says it again at the beginning of this one. “This was chosen for me,” he says, his eyes eerily blank.

Cut to Kate. Kate, who tells her children not to utter the word “paparazzi”, yet squawks “Paparazzi!” as loudly and frequently as she possibly can, while TLC adds post-production flashes to the footage to create the impression that a few passers-by with low-budget camcorders are a swarm of princess-chasing maniacs. Who claims to want a normal life but then bookends her request of multiple renditions of “happy birthday” at her kids’ party with, “If you’ve seen our show, you know you have to!”

One of many moments Monday night that wasn’t meant to be sad but was, it was in that instant that America had the chance to see the heart of Kate Gosselin. Aside from the backwards relationships she holds with virtually all of her family members and growing collection of former friends, her only form of social interaction is with herself as a TV star and everyone else the viewers. Even in the most mundane of social situations, validation of her fame takes precedence over genuine personal contact.

“My job,” is how Kate currently refers to her hectic schedule of filming, book tours and speeches. Her job. The requirements of her job, the things her job makes her do. She refers to it cryptically and repeatedly and scathingly, punctuated by furious condemnations of the public that she panders to in “her job.” She admonishes us for our interest in her family while simultaneously digging in our pockets and begging, like a bedraggled, desperate one-night-stand that senses an imminent dawn, for us not to leave, to please stay a little longer. Just a few more book deals, a few more seasons, a few more millions. For the kids.

The kids, of course, are the leverage that’s worked for Kate for more than five years. Only the balance has shifted. In season one, we, the viewing public, had responsibility for keeping organic, homemade meals on the Gosselin table hoisted upon us. Now, in season five, as the public is limping away from having its house foreclosed, its job shipped to India, and its medical bills discharged in bankruptcy, Kate has the gall to intimate, through continuation of a show that is now rendered patently absurd by its insistence upon this family as wholesome, everyday folk, that we continue to bear responsibility for ensuring that the eight Gosselin kids have access to gourmet meals prepared by a private chef and served under a $1.1 million roof.

The heartbreaking irony is that, in spite of her spastic insistence that it’s all for the kids, Mama Gosselin seems to have no concern about her children’s well being whatsoever. When talking about the impact of tabloid magazines and how it feels to see them while standing in line at the grocery store, when every mother in the developed world thought of what that must mean to the Gosselin kids who are old enough to read, Kate instead focuses on what Kate always focuses on: herself. In the filming of a program that she is assuredly aware will be seen by her brood, she castigates Jon for, according to her, being resentful of the children. And with a guilelessness that is generally reserved for the very young and the deranged, she goes on to devalue any negativity Jon feels about being the primary caregiver of eight while his wife tours the country by asserting, passionately, that he isn’t doing it alone and has a lot of help and therefore nothing to whine about… before cutting to birthday party footage in which Kate, surrounded by a small army of helpers, complains bitterly, no less than a half dozen times, about having to do everything “alone.” Followed by more screeching about nearby photographers, present in numbers that are pathetically dwarfed by the camera crew the Gosselins court on a near-daily basis. Such is the hypocrisy that is the Kate Gosselin marketing machine, the same tragically hilarious engine that plans to churn out a Fall 2009 cookbook to give readers an “inside look at one of America’s most famous close-knit families.”

“Then I realized,” Kate ruminates later in the show, on the subject of fans she previously detested; and as all observers of developmentally-appropriate rationality and maturity anticipate the admission that Kate herself initiated the celebrity/fan paradigm she perpetuates, she surprises us yet again by skipping the equation in favor of the result alone: “They welcome us into their homes… we’re family for some of them.” And with that, we understand the pathological projection through which Kate views her life; rejecting her complicity in the devil’s contract she herself inked, a perpetual victim of circumstances over which she accepts no ownership. That her thinking is disordered is beyond her comprehension, much like the way she persists in describing close friends in terms of how much they love her and her family, rather than the other way around.

So with Kate in the lead, the Gosselins blindly careen toward disaster while we watch with hands up, peeking through our fingers. Lord knows we’re not going to put down the remote – this is the best water-cooler gab since Roseanne kissed a chick. Kate’s too viciously ambitious and self-centered to stop lining up her little, matching brigade to suck at the teats of the gluttonous, reeking sow of public consumption. And the executives at TLC would be downright insane to put a stop to the ratings bonanza that has exploded from our morbid rubbernecking.

It rests in Jon’s thus-far ineffective hands to pull the plug (yes, pun intended) on this nightmare. For the kids, let’s hope he finds the strength to do it.

Jaimie Marzullo is a freelance writer and mother of two.

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