Posted on 11/17/2008 12:17:58 PM PST by buccaneer81
‘Jon & Kate’ are doing their children no favors By Mark A. Perigard
TLC’s favorite fertile couple renews their vows tonight.
But this wedding may have some viewers raising objections.
As the episode opens, the Gosselin clan - parents Jon and Kate, twins Mady and Cara and the 4-year-old sextuplets - are vacationing in Maui.
The parents hammer out a renewal ceremony. The girls go for pedicures. Jon meets with relatives he hasn’t seen in several years.
Even by “Jon & Kate” standards, it makes for a slim show.
Why do the couple feel the urgent need to renew their vows after only nine years of marriage? Kate tells the camera that she wants her kids to know that while not all moms and dads stay together, she and Jon are forever.
As the ceremony later demonstrates, not even the oldest girls understand the ceremony’s significance, and the youngest surely will forget it.
This cynic is forced to conclude the “wedding event” is a way to capitalize on a free vacation in Maui.
“Jon & Kate” has become increasingly about the freebies the Pennsylvania family can gather. The visits to increasingly far-flung destinations are nothing more than travel infomercials, with the kids as adorable props. Jon’s morning on a golf course here is a chore to the eyes, but he dutifully plugs the management in his armchair confessional.
If we’re rewarding people on the basis of fertility, shouldn’t the prizes go to the least blessed?
Yes, it’s kind of horrible the way Kate talks to Jon as if he’s one of the 4-year-olds.
As he samples wedding cakes tonight, Kate tells the wedding planner, “I’ll try what he decides. And then I’ll argue, if he decides wrong.”
But as my favorite relationship coach - that would be Judge Judy - would say, he picked her. Save your concern for the children.
Mady, for example, almost has a meltdown when her mother expects her to be her maid of honor. Is she just another reality show witch? No, she’s just an 8-year-old, having a perfectly normal moment for a child - that is being broadcast to millions of homes.
The younger kids have been trailed by cameras for almost their entire lives. What does that do to a child’s perception of the world and his or her importance in it?
The kids might not mind the cameras following them now, but they’ll probably feel differently in about 10 years when their high school classmates can download footage of their potty training to their iPods.
Imagine having all your worst moments from childhood available to anyone who wanted to see them for the rest of your life.
That’s what the Gosselin children face.
Maybe it’s time for Jon and Kate to drive the cameras out of the home for some quality family time.
I sincerely doubt that these kids will “be set up for life”. These kids are far more likely to end up dead, in jail, or tabloid fodder. Look at the majority of child stars and where they end up. I can think of only a couple (Jodie Foster, Kurt Russell) who didn’t end up in a train wreck of a life after Hollywood dropped them.
I find it to be an atrocous expression of vanity, even if it’s free. And is it true his wife told him to go get it?
Excuse me but they have these children due to en vitro fertilization. They were NOT fertile.
The punchline was a new show: "Jon Minus Nine"
it had a Jon's smiling head photoshopped onto a windsurfer.
Dang I wish I could find a screen capture of that.
Have to agree. Kate makes me cringe. She is one nasty witch.
It always irked me how Kate didn’t want to reduce the number of embryos because she is so Christian, yet she was willing to go through fertility treatments TWICE. One set of twins was not good enough for her. Why didn’t she adopt.
Love John and Kate’s show, too—thanks for your heartfelt comments. No one is making anyone watch the show, so they can just turn it off. I tape them to watch late at night when I’m ‘menopausal roaming.’ Never posted long ago, but always loved Ann of Green Gables, too, and your vacation posts on another thread.
Kate actually did the pedicures for the girls before they left for San Diego and Hawaii...
If someone wants to pay to send my family on a vacation and my kids have to attend a 30 minute made for tv wedding ceremony, sign me up. I’m sure my kids would get over being “exploited” while they were having fun at disney world.
Sounds to me like some folks just bitter over the fact that this family is getting something that they are not. Welcome to Amerika.
If they were so Christian, they would say God’s will be done. They can’t have any children, they go adopt.
Not so much. These folks have quite a reputation in the Beaverton/Hillsboro area for being arrogant and demanding. I’ve heard stories from three completely unrelated people who have told me how rotten they can treat others.
Don’t forget when one of the kids got brained by a very large concrete trebuchet counterweight.
The hair transplant surgery was donated by a doctor, as was Kate's tummy tuck. Her skin had stretched way out of proportion after she gave birth to the 6 babies.
I saw it! It was a riot!
They photoshopped his face onto a guy windsurfing, I think.
I can’t watch Jon and Kate, because I feel too bad for Jon.
OOO! Spill it!
I saw the pilot for their show (I can’t remember what it was called, but it was a one hour special on TLC) and couldn’t even finish watching. The whole thing bugged me. My mom and SIL watch it and said the kids behavior is better, but I still can’t bring myself to watch it.
Maddy can be a brat, and I've been sorry that Kate and Jon haven't required TLC to edit out her bad behavior sometimes. Her classmates probably watch the show, and eventually she'll have to deal with the fact that other kids her age won't like her...
That’s the Duggins at 17 and a 1/2.
Kinda like when someone gets bonked in the gonads with a football, it's funny because it isn't me.
I've always imagined a future where the Jon&Kate kids get together with the 17 and Pregnant kids and form a national crime syndicate that rivals the Cosa Nostra.
I read that Jon & Kate and family moved to a new house.
It’s all friend-of-a-friend type stuff, so it’s nothing very reliable. But you hear enough stories and you start to think there’s something to it. One of the stories related how they treated a friend of a co-worker who was hired to do some construction-type work on their farm. The other stories relate to business transactions. I don’t feel comfortable repeating them due to privacy concerns (for both the Roloff’s and the people involved). I’ll just say that it seems that they are pushy and think that the world owes them because they are “little people”.
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