Jon and Kate Plus...Ten?

Apparently so if you count the secret lovers that BOTH of them have.

Man what a mess this is.  A giant "he-said-she-said", and it's not even really Jon or Kate making the comments.  We've heard from Kate's brother, the brother of the girl that Jon is apparently seeing and all of the people in the town they live in.  Each of them came out with a very basic blah statement as did TLC, but this story has gotten so big that US Weekly has dedicated three straight covers to them.

So let's start at the beginning.  First Jon is caught partying with some college students in Pennsylvania.  Next thing you know, he's having an affair with a 23-year-old elementary school teacher.  THEN it comes out that he thought Kate was having an affair with one of their bodyguards and it almost came to the point that he wanted to hire a private investigator to see what the deal is.  Now they apparently haven't been seen together in about two weeks until it was the sextuplets' fifth birthday and then they got together to have a party for them.  But then they left separately.  And that's where we currently stand.

I guess maybe I just don't understand the mentality of a cheater but I really can't understand Jon's motivations for sneaking around with this other girl, if he did do it.  And when you throw all of the kids into the mix, it makes it even harder to understand.  Nobody is ever going to know the real story of what he is doing with this girl...and I do say girl because, hello, she's 23...but does it really matter?  At the end of the day, you have to explain to your children about being out with someone who's not your mommy at 3:00 in the morning.  Your children are who you have to answer to and to me, that's a lot bigger deal than answering to your wife, TLC, or America.

My friend Sara posed a question to me this weekend about the whole thing that really made me think:  Would he really be dumb enough to do something like this with all of America watching him?

And my answer was, I don't think he really cares what America thinks.  He says it himself in the trailer for the season premiere: I can't be Jon...I always have to be Jon and Kate Plus 8.  This lifestyle is not for him.  If you've ever seen an episode of the show, you can tell he's just uncomfortable with being in the spotlight.  He seems naturally quiet, reserved and introverted and really seems like he just wants to do his own thing all the time.  Several articles have alluded to him being a bad father and a lazy husband, someone who is trying to get away from the responsibilities of being a parent.  I don't think this is true at all. I think he's just trying to get away from the cameras.  There's an episode on right now as I'm writing this (research baby) and they're talking about his body fat for Pete's sake.  Who wants that broadcast to America? 

But a tiny part of me thinks he also might be trying to get away from Kate.

Just like Jon gives off the impression that he's quiet and introverted, Kate also gives off the impression that she is really controlling, impossible to please and just an all-around b***h.  Jon can't say a word without her making a snide comment about something he's said or done.  And vice versa, he makes all kinds of comments about her being a terrible person.  It's fine to be a perfectionist or a neat-freak, but she kind of takes it to an extreme.  Furthermore, she has pretty much come out and said that she loves the life she lives right now.  She loves the cameras.  She loves being in the spotlight.  

Check out this article from Entertainment Weekly's website.   Namely the final quote in the article:

KATE: I don't ever want to go back. I'm very comfortable at this point in front of cameras, I love it, I go into a studio and I'm like, Ahhhh. It's odd, because I would have never thought that of myself. But I'm enjoying very much what I'm doing.

So immediately, you just have two completely conflicting personalities regarding their entire lifestyle.  And that can't be easy on anybody's marriage when one person is completely on board and the other one is more or less completely resistant.

So why keep doing it?  Why keep putting your family through all of this?  Why drive each other to possibly even having an affair when you are the parents of eight children under the age of 10? 

Because how else are you going to support those eight children without complete freebies from TLC and every other company under the sun?  Check out this article, namely the list of free stuff that they have gotten over the course of their time on the show.  Vacations, beds, furniture, and random cosmetic enhancements for Jon and Kate.  If you're Jon and Kate, you do the smart thing and milk this shit for as long as TLC will have you.  Let Ellen give you bikes, let Disney give you vacations, take advantage of all that and let everyone else pay your bills for as long as you can.

So nice marketing on Kate's part, but where does the line of "real family with eight kids just trying to make it" end and the line of celebrity begin?  Hair transplants?  Teeth whitening?  Box seats at a baseball game?  These are not things that a normal family gets to enjoy.  There is just a difference between necessities (the washing machine, clothes, and diapers) and splurges and that list seems to hold a lot more splurges than necessities.  It's awesome for the kids to get to experience all of those fun things, like the San Diego Zoo, and I'm sure their little faces lit up when they got there.  But don't talk about normalcy when you're also being given suites in Hawaii and skiing lessons.  At some point, I feel like they just have to say "no thanks".

And now, I have to go back to my original thoughts.  Now Kate too has to go back to her kids and explain why people are writing about her and the bodyguard, which I assume is someone that they know and is close to their family.  If you're making yourself out to be Supermom, the woman who holds her household together, how are you going to let yourself get caught up in this whole tabloid mess too?  If you're such a control-freak, control your own life. 

So the moral of my story is simple: get it together Jon and Kate.  Go back to the reason you're doing all this, or at least what SHOULD be the reason for all of this, and that is your children.  If things aren't working out for you guys, that's ok.  But why do you have to put yourself in the middle of a tabloid war to show that to America?  I understand that it comes with the territory of putting your entire life on camera, but do you need to go to the full lengths of sneaking out of a 23-year-old's apartment and having other people talk about you at every book signing and speaking engagement you go to?   

I guess we'll see what happens on next week's season premiere and how they choose to approach this whole debacle.  Great.  Another terrible show I can be sucked into.