A few nights ago, while waiting in line for 8:00 to roll around, we were hanging out in the car listening to the radio. If you must know what we were waiting for, we were blending in with the other hordes of people waiting for our free root beer floats from sonic.
Hey! I just paid $36 to fill up my tank, went $70 OVER my grocery budget and have a huge mammogram bill looming over my head- I take the freebies when I can…
At any rate- this post isn’t about the line or the root beer floats. (yummm.)
It’s about the topic, lightly discussed on the radio.
The Gosselins. Namely, Jon & Kate. Love em, or hate em- there’s a reality that the general public isn’t really acknowledging their own responsibility in the Gosselin disaster.
This show has been on for several years now, and nearly everyone knows who Jon & Kate are. Almost everyone has a pretty strong opinion on them, as well. People think she’s a shrew, people think he’s a cheat. People call her a cheating whore and blame his allegid infadelies on her cold insensitivity. Whatever. Have your opinion. I appreciate that we are all so different. The sad truth is however, that the show has the highest ratings right now, that it’s ever seen. It’s nominated for awards it had never been a contender for. While there are network executives and PR people living the life with their high priced celebratory cocktails, a family is dying.
It’s tragic.
It’s tragic, to me, that we have become a people who flock to the scene of disaster. No better than greedy ambulence chasers, we- as a society- hungrily drool at the first announcement of a marital scandel. Why? Why is it entertaining for us to see lives fall apart?
Alot of people say that Kate gets whats coming to her- but I can’t help but wonder if those words aren’t often birthed from jealousy. Who wouldn’t want amazing opportunities handed to them, just by living their life? Because she let the world into her life, a few days a week- several weeks a year, her small army of children are fed, clothed and have a beautiful home to grow up in. Who, anywhere, can say their life is free from drama? The “aunt jody” stuff? Drama.
And really, as bloggers, do we have any room to talk? We post pictures of our kids when they poop in the potty for the first time. We allow the world to see videos of our babies first words, photos of their every milestone and read the details of our drunken dates and sex lives. Just because there isn’t a camera crew shooting for 9 hours, from our living room, doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes exploit our own kids too. And to the moms who would say, “it’s different”, I just have to ask you to be honest with yourselvs. If someone came up tomorrow and offered you hundreds of thousands of dollars to put edited snippets of your daily life on tv- you’d consider it. I know I would…
And newsflash- marriages fall apart at alarming rates, these days. Marriages that aren’t on TLC. This isn’t about their show, this is about their relationship… Their family…
Until we’ve been in their shoes and understood the reasons behind the choices they’ve made- we can’t have a clue.
I think she made a decision, as a mom. Whether it was putting success ahead of her children or not- most mom’s have been guilty of prioritizing something before their babies at least once. We are no better than she is… These people on our tv’s and tabloid covers- THEY ARE PEOPLE. Real life, eat-three-square-meals-a-day people. They pee, poo, cry, laugh and make mistakes just like the rest of us. And they wake up to the reality that there is an entire world of people who are loving the ability to witness their family crumbling.
I am sad.
this makes me sad.
As long as we find joy in the heartaches of others, we will never be a unified and loving nation. We will never be a country of people who stand up, more importantly, as a community. No more do loving people rally around the hurting, delivering pot roasts and pitching in to save a family. Nope, we are the society to snear at the hurting, from the corner of our eyes while spreading stories far more horrific than the truth.
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