Jon and Kate Plus 8, Official Thread--Part 7

[TanyaLovesPooh]

while I haven't checked this out personally, I have heard in one of her video interviews she admits to meeting Kate and Jon prior to her babysitting stint this summer. Which would mean Kate lied about not meeting her before and having to check on the kids the day the police were called.

I'm all about conspiracy theory these days! None of this blew up until Jon stopped filming.

On this link she states that she had never previously met Kate until she was nanny to the kids.

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/10/exclusive-video-interview-nanny-stephanie-santoro-slams-ex-lover-jon-gosselin-hes

I thought they filed suit because Jon broke the contract, and he has interviewed without permission and wants to sign up for other shows?

That is exactly why TLC is going after Jon.

 

[momrek06]

Did anyone watch the Law and Order on Friday night? I DVR'd it and watched it over the weekend. I thought it was pretty good and a lot of things that we'd said here were said by the actors. Just interesting that's all.

I can't believe how slow this thread is today! Last week it was pages a day, now this week it's a few posts a day!

OT
I did BUT my DVR kicked out before the show ended. So did the dad kill the mom....? They were just going to trial but I was not totally convinced it was the dad and then boom the show is over...........

 

[madge]

Sorry that post is so long - it looks like a VERY interesting article though! I'm hoping to have time to read it tonight!!!

ETA: I read it and really like the article! Very telling IMO! I'm ready to head home but am excited to see what y'all think! It's long but worth the read for sure!

I want to read it further, but at first read .. I think it's very good!

 

[C.Ann]

With respect, I don't think it matters what this thread *decided* two threads ago. We are now looking at a whole different ball game with the new lawsuits. I thnk we can discuss it and some of us like perusing the paperwork and researching legislation.

Yes, it will definitely take labor lawyers to figure it out. I think the case, if it goes to court, will set legal precedents. Fascinating, but really sad for the children.

I agree.. It almost looks as though TLC may have opened a can of worms that would have been better left untouched..

As long as this continues to be an "open" discussion - and issues continue to change almost on a daily basis - all topics are fair game.. If there are things that people don't care to read and/or discuss, they can skip over those posts - pretty much like I do with Jon and his girlfirends - LOL..

 

[madge]

Finally. A decent article about Jon. I knew one would surface eventually. LOL

http://www.okmagazine.com/2009/10/report-jon-gosselin-asks-for-spiritual-guidance/

 

[OhMari]

Shoot, who does the timeline on here-sorry, I can't remember..
You could of written an article for Vanity Fair.
Thanks for the link.

 

[DMRick]

What I said was

I'm not going to comment on all the permit stuff you posted, because I think we went in that direction two threads ago, and decided they weren't breaking the law

What you posted had been posted and we discussed it, so for me, I wasn't interested in that part at this time. I don't care who else is, of course, (and I'm sure many are..I just know for me, it doesn't matter what I think it says, it only matters what the courts say, and so I'm not interest. Me, just me. I didn't say or suggest, that no one else could discuss it. I was commenting on why I chose to only pull out one sentence you did say that did interest me. I am curious about what you said about the lawsuit. You said the suit is about Jon not allowing the kids to tape. I'm curious about that, since i haven't read all of the paperwork. Or, are they suing him because he broke the contract about speaking and going on shows?

[/B]

With respect, I don't think it matters what this thread *decided* two threads ago. We are now looking at a whole different ball game with the new lawsuits. I thnk we can discuss it and some of us like perusing the paperwork and researching legislation.

Yes, it will definitely take labor lawyers to figure it out. I think the case, if it goes to court, will set legal precedents. Fascinating, but really sad for the children.

 

[DMRick]

I just want to reply, because I hate it when something I said is taken out of context or misconstrued. I never said any topic is tabu (well, unless it gets the thread removed) or shouldn't be discussed. I said I wasn't interested in it, so I wasn't commenting, since I had already made my comments when we discussed a similar post a couple of threads ago, but I was interested in something else that was in the same post. Just wanted to clear that up, so someone reading just some posts, don't think I said we shouldn't discuss something. I never said that. Of course everything is 'fair game'. Has anyone said it wasn't?

 

[madge]

Shoot, who does the timeline on here-sorry, I can't remember..
You could of written an article for Vanity Fair.
Thanks for the link.

the best part of the article was the quotes...someone with a timeline wouldn't have that.

 

[C.Ann]

Finally. A decent article about Jon. I knew one would surface eventually. LOL

http://www.okmagazine.com/2009/10/report-jon-gosselin-asks-for-spiritual-guidance/

Jon isn't Jewish, is he? Just wondering..

 

[walden]

What I said was

What you posted had been posted and we discussed it, so for me, I wasn't interested in that part at this time. I don't care who else is, of course, (and I'm sure many are..I just know for me, it doesn't matter what I think it says, it only matters what the courts say, and so I'm not interest. Me, just me. I didn't say or suggest, that no one else could discuss it. I was commenting on why I chose to only pull out one sentence you did say that did interest me. I am curious about what you said about the lawsuit. You said the suit is about Jon not allowing the kids to tape. I'm curious about that, since i haven't read all of the paperwork. Or, are they suing him because he broke the contract about speaking and going on shows?

[/B]

Why, bless your heart, I so agree. I also hate when something I said is taken out of context and completely misconstrued.

I did not say that the suit was about Jon not allowing the kids to tape. I said that I thought the suit was all about Jon breaching confidentiality and spilling stuff that could make TLC look really bad re PA child labor laws. The whistleblower issue that doesn't interest you.

I'd copy and paste my whole post again, but it is there for the reading if you want -- and dinner is burning.

Edit: Oooh, I rescued dinner, and remembered that what I said was that TLC suspended taping because I thought there might have been something in the fine print allowing one parent to nix taping. So sue me for speculating. I think a lot of us have been guilty of speculating.

Off to eat dinner now but bracing for a diatribe on speculation.

 

[WaltD4Me]

Jon isn't Jewish, is he? Just wondering..

Well, not officially. Last week or the week before he did an interview where he said he is now half Jewish and half Korean. I doubt he went through the process of converting already. Before that according to him on LKL, he was Christian.

And, truly I know it's cynical....but I'm not quite convinced about his appearance Sunday yet. I have to wait and see what is on The Insider tonight, because they said Jon is going to be all to tell them all about his weekend. Ifthat includes his seeking this advice, then I will have to think it's a PR stunt.

 

[madge]

Jon isn't Jewish, is he? Just wondering..

he had an epiphany about a week ago.. dating Hailey and having a Jewish lawyer makes him feel half-Jewish

 

[madge]

And, truly I know it's cynical....but I'm not quite convinced about his appearance Sunday yet. I have to wait and see what is on The Insider tonight, because they said Jon is going to be all to tell them all about his weekend. Ifthat includes his seeking this advice, then I will have to think it's a PR stunt.

Of course it's a PR stunt... I didn't say I believed what was in the article, just that it was positive.

 

[C.Ann]

he had an epiphany about a week ago.. dating Hailey and having a Jewish lawyer makes him feel half-Jewish

 

[DMRick]

Why, bless your heart, I so agree. I also hate when something I said is taken out of context and completely misconstrued.

I did not say that the suit was about Jon not allowing the kids to tape. I said that I thought the suit was all about Jon breaching confidentiality and spilling stuff that could make TLC look really bad re PA child labor laws. The whistleblower issue that doesn't interest you.

I'd copy and paste my whole post again, but it is there for the reading if you want -- and dinner is burning.

Now I'm really confused. This is the sentence I was asking you about..from your previous post:

Filing suit now to continue filming the children, after Jon has said he has reservations seems bad judgement. Also interest in the show is waning, why not just go ahead with Kate's project? And why with all this other stuff thrown in? TLC could probably have got Jon on the morals clause way back in Feb/March, and he has been chattering to the media for a while, with or without pay and with or without permission. He is also talking specifically about compensation and hours.

The bolded area..really, not being snarky, but I must be reading it wrong. I'm reading that you are saying they are filing suit to continue filming the kids. I too, was away all weekend, and I thought there was lawsuit about Jon and confidentiality and being on shows talking..then I read the bolded part, and thought maybe even more went on. Not wanting to misconstrue what you said..or take it out of context, but I really don't get that part of your post. Which is why I asked about it .

I've reread it..maybe you meant that it would not be good to file suit for that reason? Again, that's why I asked. I'm reading backwards, since I'm not caught up, and I may have misunderstood what you were saying. I certainly didn't mean to miscontrue it..I just don't understand if you are saying that's why they sued, or it would not be good to sue for those reasons.It was a lot to read (along with other very long posts LOL) and lot to take in.

That said, I certainly never said it shouldn't be discussed just because we already did. I just didn't want to bring up the same points I already had from the last time LOL. We rehash everything 10 or 20 times.

 

[WaltD4Me]

Of course it's a PR stunt... I didn't say I believed what was in the article, just that it was positive.

Now Madge....you never know...maybe there wasn't a video camera in sight and Jon honestly went in front of those 1,000 people seeking true redemption.

 

[walden]

OK. Peace. We are, were, talking at cross purposes, and I went back and edited my last post for clarification, probably as you were writing this. Read on, past the quote here for more clarification.

Now I'm really confused. This is the sentence I was asking you about..from your previous post:

<snip>

I've reread it..maybe you meant that it would not be good to file suit for that reason? Again, that's why I asked. I'm reading backwards, since I'm not caught up, and I may have misunderstood what you were saying. I certainly didn't mean to miscontrue it..I just don't understand if you are saying that's why they sued, or it would not be good to sue for those reasons.It was a lot to read (along with other very long posts LOL) and lot to take in.

That said, I certainly never said it shouldn't be discussed just because we already did. I just didn't want to bring up the same points I already had from the last time LOL. We rehash everything 10 or 20 times.

The bolded bit is exactly correct. I don't understand why TLC would file this particular suit at this particular time. They are throwing the book at Jon (and as they are suing Jon and Kate the Company (by my reading) it just seems nutty.

And I stand my my speculation that there is something really wrong with the contract and the filming that violates PA Child Labor Laws and provoked the suit. But contract lawyers will decide that.

And yes, I'm sure you have all discussed this many times, but there is probably going to be a whole lot of info coming out that re-opens the discussions.

 

[Mickey527]

I am Catholic so I don't really know much about the Jewish religion but:
My cousin met a jewish man and fell in love. She converted so she could marry him and raise their children as jews. I do remember it took her 2 years of weekly studies to finish. She was funny though, she went overboard and kept a kosher house even though her husband wasn't into it. He cheated and ate whatever he wanted and it drove her crazy.
If Jon is planning on converting he has alot of work to do, they are not just going to take him because he "feels" Jewish.
Also, I bet the horse in Central Park had some competition with Jon the other day. His black suit jacket must be ripe, he wears it every day. when does he have time to take it to the cleaners? Maybe when he is picking up the kids and they tell him they don't like his outfit.

 

[3prettyprincesses]

The Unreal Rise of Jon and Kate Gosselin
How did two average parents from rural Pennsylvania with an outsize brood rise to such dizzying heights of stardom and tabloid infamy? The author peers behind the curtain of the biggest celebrity story of the year.
By Nancy Jo Sales WEB EXCLUSIVE October 19, 2009
‘Nobu, Nobu, I want Nobu!” Kate Gosselin wants to go to Nobu. She’s got a night away from her eight kids—also her co-stars on the hit reality series Jon & Kate Plus Eight—and a reporter is offering to take her out on the town. “I want sushi!” Kate says, leaning back in an armchair in her suite at the Essex House hotel overlooking Central Park, checking her BlackBerry, popping gum.

But Laurie Goldberg, vice president of communications at TLC, which airs Jon & Kate, doesn’t think Nobu’s such a great idea. Kate cried on the Today show this morning, answering questions about why she’s still wearing her wedding ring (“for them,” she said of her children, sniffling), and this afternoon she told People, “I am so emotionally spent” (from her husband’s behavior, which has included philandering with the daughter of the plastic surgeon who gave Kate her tummy tuck), and so it might not look good for her to be out enjoying herself at a hot spot.

“You’re like a prisoner,” Kate says of her newfound fame, annoyed.

Kate, who in the first season of Jon & Kate, two years ago, appeared on-screen as a dowdy, sweatpants-wearing mama hen, is now looking very much the celebrity—from her tanned, trained body to her curiously asymmetrical blond hairdo, now so iconic as to be the model for a popular Halloween wig.

Her phone rings. “Oh, it’s Kelly”—Ripa, of Live with Regis and Kelly—Kate says, holding up a French-manicured finger, signaling for us all to be silent. She’s going on the show tomorrow morning. She and Kelly gab. “Hiya!”

It’s early August, and Kate, who is 34, has come to New York to do battle—media battle. She and her estranged husband, Jon, are churning around at the center of a multi-media tsunami focused on their split and impending divorce. They are the subject of gossipy talk-show talk—a frequent “Hot Topic” on The View—and the target of thousands of disapproving blogs (GosselinsWithoutPity being the most insane).

Since March, they have appeared on the cover of the major celebrity weeklies more than 50 times—more than any other celebrity, including Brad and Angelina. And most of this frenzy of coverage has not been at all flattering to Kate, her image, or her fledgling “brand,” which already includes books, DVDs, product endorsements, speaking engagements, and plans for a children’s-clothing line and a talk show of her own.

“I’m running a business—hello?” Kate says. Kate is at war.

And right now, she is under siege. It’s Jon vs. Kate out in medialand, and the media is squarely on Team Jon. “In news focus groups,” says Richard Spencer, editor of In Touch Weekly, which has put Jon and Kate on its cover 15 times, “it was amazing to me that readers were actually on Jon’s side. ‘Well, you know what, she’s been awful to him. I don’t blame him for having an affair.’”

“Mom to Monster,” cried the cover of Us in May, followed by “Caught Hitting Her Daughter” on the cover of In Touch, with shots of Kate roughly spanking one of her six adorable five-year-olds. And then there was “Did Kate Cheat First?” on the cover of Star in May. That was the story that broke the rumor of an affair between Kate and her bodyguard, Steve Neild—an allegation Kate has called “disgusting and unthinkable.” A spokesman for Neild deems the rumors without “any merit whatsoever.”

Neild, a dashing, salt-and-pepper-haired former counter-terrorism cop from New Zealand (also married), is in the hotel room with us now. He used to protect a software mogul. “That was interesting,” he says. “Bit of a nerd.” Neild travels with Kate; he accompanied her on the book tours for her best-selling Multiple Bles8ings: Surviving to Thriving with Twins and Sextuplets and Eight Little Faces.

Neild doesn’t think going to Nobu is such a good idea, either. “I think it’s too risky,” he tells Kate, who just shrugs, blandly conceding, resembling not at all the self-described control freak who bossed and bullied Jon through the first four seasons of their reality show (once barking at him in a store, “Come!” “You yelled at me like I’m a frickkin’ dog,” Jon whined). The couple announced their split on-air in June, to the highest ratings of any episode of a basic-cable reality series ever, with 10.6 million viewers.

“I think the toy store would be O.K.,” says Neild, after I suggest a shopping trip to F.A.O. Schwarz. Goldberg agrees. It’s an image that’ll play well in the media: Kate buying toys for the kids while Jon is on the cover of Star this week for an alleged tryst with one of the tabloid’s own reporters, Kate Major (“Jon and the Other Kate!”).

A swarm of paparazzi is predicted to follow the excursion. Since March, when In Touch and Star simultaneously broke the news that the reality of the quaint, Christian Gosselins might be somewhat different from that seen on TV (“Jon’s Talking Divorce!” In Touch announced), Kate says they have hounded her “every single single single single single single single day of my life. I hate it. I hate it so much.”

I say you can almost feel sympathy for the celebrities who lose their tempers around photographers. “Who says I didn’t lose it—or may not?” Kate asks archly.

“I’m waiting for the call,” Goldberg says, laughing.

“I’m actually there to keep the paparazzi safe,” Neild jokes.

“Shut up,” Kate tells them sharply, frowning. “Now that’s where I draw the line.”

How did Kate Gosselin become a reality superstar? What perfect storm made “Jon and Kate” this year’s tabloid obsession? “It surprised the hell out of me,” says TMZ’s Harvey Levin. “Watching a woman push a wagonful of kids up the street is just not interesting to me. But then when it started to unravel, it became interesting in a different way.”

“It became a show that was completely suited to a multi-platform world,” says Ginia Bellafante, TV critic at The New York Times. “You can’t just watch Jon & Kate on television and understand it anymore. You have to participate in it on all these different levels—tabloids, news shows, talk shows, the blogosphere. Jon & Kate became unintentionally brilliant because it demanded so much other consumption to find out what was ‘real.’”

From its inception, the show was like a petri dish of American culture. It began with multiple mania. Eileen O’Neill, president of TLC—herself a twin—was looking for stories about multiples when, in 2006, she approached Bill Hayes, head of the North Carolina–based Figure 8 Films, which had specialized in programming about unusual families and medical miracles (18 Kids and Counting; Dwarf Family: Meet the Fooses).

Figure 8 found Jon and Kate—a laid-back, laid-off I.T. specialist and an uptight pediatric nurse with a set of twins, age five, and sextuplets, age two—in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. Kate was the daughter of an evangelical pastor and Jon the son of a pediatric dentist; they had both grown up in Pennsylvania, she in Reading and he in Huntingdon. Jon’s mother was of Korean descent, adding bi-raciality to the couple’s appeal in the dawning age of Obama. (The show is apparently very popular among Asians.)

They met at a picnic in 1997 and married when Jon was 22 and Kate 24. He wore a leather jacket back then; she, a former cheerleader, wore scrunchies. When they found she was unable to conceive due to polycystic ovary syndrome, they turned to fertility treatments, resulting in the birth of their twins, Mady and Cara, in 2000.

In 2003, another round of fertility fuel produced Alexis, Hannah, Aaden, Collin, Leah, and Joel. Flouting doctors’ advice, Kate refused selective reduction because it was counter to her religious beliefs. (The Gosselins’ devout Christianity made them popular with conservatives—many of whom promptly dropped them when their marriage hit the skids.)

When Figure 8 came calling, Jon and Kate were struggling to make ends meet. “Life was so stinking difficult,” says Kate, who in 2005 demanded Medicaid continue paying for her expensive baby nurse. She challenged the ruling denying her aid, the news of which prompted an outpouring of angry letters into papers across Pennsylvania. Even before she was on TV, Kate was controversial, seen as a diva.

Needing money, the Gosselins agreed to subject their family to a reality crew. Figure 8 did a one-hour special on them, which aired on the Discovery Health Channel in 2006. Their weekly show debuted on TLC the following year. Speculation about their compensation per episode has ranged from $25,000 to $75,000—“I wish!” Kate exclaims, refusing to give the actual number. To date, they have filmed more than 100 shows.

Jon never wanted to do it, but Kate was the boss. According to Figure 8’s Bill Hayes, “you could see the friction [in their relationship] from the start.” And that made for good television. Jon & Kate quickly became the top-rated show on TLC, with an audience of between five and six million viewers. “We had a show that was rising in interest,” says Eileen O’Neill, “based on the unfiltered, sometimes cantankerous relationship of this couple with these eight beautiful children.” Often the production team would goad Jon and Kate into discussing their disagreements during their weekly couch sessions.

Kate yelled at Jon; she ordered him around, made fun of him. “She just, like, snaps,” Jon groused on-air. He now says he felt “abused.” Once, as Jon served the mounds of pancakes Kate was making for the kids, she quipped, “I’m the cook, he’s the waitress.” “Waiter,” Jon corrected her in his desultory fashion.

And this was another aspect of the show that seemed to whip up Zeitgeist-ian winds: in an era of confusion about gender roles in marriage—not to mention an era obsessed with mommy culture—Kate was unapologetically wearing the pants.

“I think part of the intrigue was that Kate was behaving in a way you don’t expect mothers to behave,” says Janice Min, the former editor of Us, who put Jon and Kate on the cover an unprecedented seven times in a row. “And yet part of the sick appeal is, I think, every single person who’s married can admit there’s a little bit of Kate Gosselin lurking in them.”

In the show’s fourth season, in 2008, Jon seemed to experience what Gail Collins has cleverly identified as the “feminine ‘problem that has no name’ that Betty Friedan wrote about in 1963.” He had been working again, this time as an I.T. analyst in the governor of Pennsylvania’s office in Harrisburg, but then he quit.

“He said he ‘just wanted to be Jon,’” Kate says disdainfully. But that had become impossible. “I remember Jon and I having a conversation some time in 2007,” Kate says, “to the effect of ‘We’re in this, and we can never go back,’ and I kind of secretly had a little grip of fear.” When they renewed their vows, in Hawaii, in the spring of 2008, she says, it was the first time they were “paparazzi’d.”

“I think Jon lost his identity,” says someone who works for the show. “He was like, Look, I don’t like this fame. I hate this. And Kate was like, It’s funny, I hated the fame and now I’m liking it. She was the star. Jon acknowledged on the show that she was the one who had the writing, the books, the career. This is a classic story of people growing apart.”

A reality star was born. She got a tummy tuck and a trainer and a new hairdo, which she traveled 90 miles, each way, to have styled. He got hair plugs.

They also had a new house, a $1.3 million, 6,200-square-foot, five-bedroom, seven-bathroom McMansion on 36 acres in Berks County, Pennsylvania, a rural area with a lot of affluence. Jon stayed home with the kids while Kate, increasingly in demand, traveled for her book tours and speaking engagements. It was some time last year, according to a source close to Jon, that Jon began to suspect that Kate and Neild, her bodyguard, were having a romantic relationship.

“I speculate, but I don’t know,” Jon said on Good Morning America in early September—by which time he and Kate were openly duking it out across the airwaves. “When they were traveling together, I felt jealous. Here I’m Mr. Mom. And then there’s some other guy traveling with my wife.”

Kate denies the affair, saying she is “beyond angry” at Jon’s allegations.

“Jon believes it’s true,” says the source. “People have told him things where she and Neild have stayed in the same hotel room. She’s always with him. He doesn’t act like her bodyguard, he acts like her man.” Kate calls this “absolutely untrue.” Neild’s spokesman maintains that his relationship with Kate is “of the highest professional standard.”

Last October, says the source, Kate sat Jon down at the kitchen table and said she had “grown out of him, she was done with him, and she no longer wanted to be with him. She said, ‘I don’t even know why I married you in the first place.’” A spokesman for Kate says she has “chosen to take the high road and not get into those details.”

Nonetheless, Kate has insisted—on Today and elsewhere—that it was Jon who ended the marriage. Jon has maintained—in In Touch and other places—that Kate did. The source who knows Jon says that Jon tried to keep it together, asking Kate to go to counseling with him; but the only counseling she would agree to was Dr. Phil (they had been on his show once for parenting tips). At a private session in L.A., according to the source, the media shrink counseled them to stay together “to keep their brand intact. Jon was like, Are you crazy? I’m here to save my marriage and you’re talking about my brand?” Kate has confirmed the meeting took place, but will not discuss the details. Dr. Phil declined to comment.

Throughout the fall, Jon was living in a guest room above the garage. And then in January, says his friend, lonely and unhappy, he started going out to bars. In March, while Jon was visiting his mother in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, he showed up at a beer bash thrown by Juniata College seniors; they took pictures and put them in the college paper. “Playing beer pong and all those fun things,” Kate says.

“You have to understand,” says Kate, “that was not the first night he was out. It had been a couple of months. He had been staying out till two a.m. I knew it was just a matter of time” before somebody in the media caught on.

And someone did. “It was the beginning of this incredible phenomenon known as Jon and Kate Gosselin,” says Candace Trunzo, editor of Star. After the Juniata College pictures hit the Internet, Trunzo sent a reporter out to Pennsylvania, where the reporting, she says, was like fish in a barrel. “Everybody wanted to talk about them. They had become a real-life soap opera. The show was never as interesting as the two of them in real life.” Star has put Jon and Kate on its cover 15 times since March.

“They were doomed to be exposed,” Trunzo says, “because they put themselves out there in the first place. And now they’re addicted to the limelight.”

Fifteen paparazzi chase Kate Gosselin to F.A.O. Schwarz. As she steps out of the doors of the Essex House hotel and onto the sidewalk on Central Park South, they come dashing out of parked cars, flying over the wall of Central Park, running toward her.

The cameras go chick-chick-chick-chick. Kate climbs into an awaiting, chauffeur-driven S.U.V. (it’s only a four-block drive). Why Kate? I ask one of the photographers. “It’s a story, ya know?” he says, snapping away.

“I can tell you why probably Princess Diana died,” Kate says in the car. “Those flashes are blinding!” We take off.

The paparazzi follow—on bikes, in cars, weaving in and out of traffic, turning back and pointing their cameras at Kate. One photographer is driving his Zipcar backward down the street—backward, down Central Park South. Other drivers are honking, shouting. “What are you, nuts?”

“They’re all sort of bald and fattish, aren’t they?” says Kate. “They have a look.” She leans out the window and yells to one of the bike riders, “Hurry up!” She laughs her whooping laugh.

She talks about how they followed her and the kids on their beach vacation to Bald Head, North Carolina—that was the trip where Kate showed off her new tummy tuck in an orange bikini and wound up on the cover of nearly every celebrity weekly.

“That was the most revealing moment for me,” says Janice Min, “when Kate came out in a bikini not once but three times for a quote-unquote spontaneous moment of play with her kids.” It was also the week after Star’s cover had been: “Jon and Kate’s Kids Beg, ‘Daddy Don’t Go!’”

Kate says that since the onset of “the bad behavior” (she means Jon’s), there have been paparazzi camped outside her house in Pennsylvania, “anywhere from 4 to 17 of them.” They follow her around town as she runs errands. They go to her kids’ school. “I always tell [the children], ‘Turn your back and don’t look at them, don’t speak to them,’” says Kate. “I don’t even let them use the word. I mean, no five-year-old should be using the word ‘paparazzi.’”

Another element of the Jon-and-Kate story that can’t be discounted is the financial woes of print media in the Great Recession. Jon and Kate were bad behavior from heaven to tabloids beset by budget concerns and battling a waning interest in actual celebrities, who are often more in control of their image. “Brad and Angelina try to be discreet,” says Richard Spencer of In Touch, “whereas Jon and Kate, they serve it daily to you on a platter.” The Jon-and-Kate story is also cheap to produce; the price of paparazzi shots of the family runs significantly lower than pictures of the latest Kardashian wedding.

In Touch sold close to a million copies with Jon’s cover exclusive “I’m Tired of Being Blamed.” Sales of Us went from around 600,000 to more than a million with many of its Jon-and-Kate covers, according to Min. Star won’t give out figures, but Candace Trunzo says, “It was one of our biggest stories of the year.”

The Jon-and-Kate mania was also assisted by a number of willing inside sources. While the tabloids all claim not to pay for stories, it is generally thought that they do—and money may be an attractive incentive to some potential sources in a bad economy.

“The ones claiming we are exploiting our children,” Kate says—here referring to the tabloids and other media that have criticized her for putting her kids on television—“are the ones exploiting our children!”

In May, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry began conducting an investigation into whether Jon & Kate Plus Eight is abiding by child-labor laws. TLC released a statement saying that “for an extended period of time, we have been engaged in cooperative discussions and supplied all requested information.”

As the S.U.V. pulls up to F.A.O. Schwarz, the paparazzi arrive in a crush at the car door. Chick-chick-chick-chick-chick. Kate climbs out, assisted by Neild, who escorts her into the store, warning the paparazzi not to follow her.

“That’s the mother that had eight kids!” a shopper squeals. It’s a weekday, and the store is filled with tourists, men in khaki shorts and women with scrunchies. Suddenly everyone is pulling out a digital camera. “It’s Kate Gosselin!”

Neild asks a security guard to call for backup.

Everyone wants to take a picture with Kate. She stops obligingly, here and there, posing with the same elated smile for every picture—it’s the same smile she’ll wear in her People cover next week: “Kate Strikes Back!”

A personal shopper, an older lady in a floral-print dress, is summoned to help Kate select toys for her brood. Kate sails along beside her, ignoring all the gawkers. The personal shopper shows her some hacky sacks: “Boys like these.” “I’ll take your word for it,” Kate sniffs, moving past them. The personal shopper shows her some action figures: “This is the hottest stuff for boys.” “I’d rather die,” says Kate. “Moving right along!”

“You look fabulous, Kate!” a woman shouts. “Kate, we love you. Stay strong!” says another.

Kate accidentally steps on a little boy’s foot with her three-inch heels; he yelps. “Oooooh, sorry about that,” she says, moving right along.

She finally decides on some lunch boxes; CAT digger trucks; crafts for girls. Everything is rung up and put in two gigantic bags. A young British paparazzo is clandestinely snapping the transaction, his camera hidden under a stuffed animal. I ask him what he sees in Kate. “She’s a massive story at the moment,” he whispers. When I relay this comment to Kate, she scoffs, “At the moment?”

Within hours, the pictures of the shopping trip are all over the Internet. Even Perez Hilton weighs in, posting a picture of Kate and her TLC publicist Laurie Goldberg, over which he writes, “Keep It Together!” And scrawls across Goldberg, “Go PR!”

Between the time I see Kate in New York in August and the next time I see her, in September, something happens. She starts to win.

Jon doesn’t do himself any favors, media-wise. “He’s gone rogue,” says Goldberg. “I can’t control him.” Jon has moved to New York, to an apartment on the Upper West Side (he shares custody with Kate and stays with the kids in Pennsylvania a few days a week), and he seems to be going through a second adolescence modeled on many viewings of Entourage.

He has taken to wearing cubic-zirconia earrings. He is snapped partying in Vegas. He is flown to the South of France to hang out on the yacht of Christian Audigier, the fashion designer behind the Ed Hardy brand (which Jon is briefly in talks about promoting). He appears on an episode of American Chopper. He is seen hanging out with Kevin Federline—yes, K-Fed—and Michael Lohan, the father of Lindsay, with whom he is discussing doing a reality show, The Divorced Dads Club.

“Oh, he’s headed for Buttafuocco territory,” says Harvey Levin.

Jon seems to be convinced that he is a celebrity—a real celebrity. “At our V.M.A. party,” says Richard Spencer, “he told one of our guests, ‘Ya know, I’m so cool with my fame right now, I can just go up to Diddy and be like, What’s up, Sean?’”

“He would never make a comment like that,” said Mike Heller, Jon’s manager. “He doesn’t look at himself as a celeb. He looks at himself as a guy the world knows but only because he had a show.”

But what Jon does that really gets him screwed in medialand is to screw the babysitter—allegedly.

Jon has reportedly already had dalliances with a number of women—a Pennsylvania teacher, Deanna Hummel, 24 (who denied it); the Star reporter, Kate Major, 26 (who resigned after the tryst, calling it a conflict of interest); and the daughter of Kate’s plastic surgeon, Hailey Glassman, 22, with whom Jon has said he is in love and whom he has reportedly asked to marry him. “He’s a horny dude!” says Candace Trunzo.

And yet, amazingly, America’s media consumers still felt sorry for him. Kate had been that objectionable in their eyes. “But now the tide has started to turn,” says Richard Spencer.

In September, the babysitter in question, Stephanie Santoro, 23, told her story to In Touch (“Nanny Admits Affair with Jon!”). “I was scared one of the kids was going to pop their heads out” of the windows while she and Jon were in the backyard cavorting in the hot tub, said Santoro, “but he told me to relax.”

Jon could not be reached for comment.

In late September, TLC officially subtracted him from the equation, renaming the series Kate Plus Eight.

Kate is all smiles when she waltzes into Sarabeth’s Kitchen on Central Park South one day in September. She’s coming from her second taping of The View—she’s been co-co-hosting—and she is psyched, even giddy. “It comes to me very easily when I’m doing TV,” she says. “It’s not an issue. I laugh that people are like, ‘Oh, that must be so hard.’ To me it’s so very easy! I say to myself, No, no, you can do this. I felt like I was walking in on their turf. They were all lined up in their chairs in the makeup room. Well, it took about 39 seconds for them to see I’m not there to take over or anything. I definitely bonded with Sherri. She has gone through a divorce and she took me under her wing. Barbara was wonderful!”

“It was a huge honor,” Kate says. “I don’t feel really worthy, but if they’re asking me, hey man, I’m doin’ it!”

On The View, Kate talked—as she has recently on Today, and Larry King Live, and Live with Regis and Kelly—about one of her “meltdown moments,” when she cried and felt she couldn’t cope. “I don’t know why that came as a surprise to people,” she says. “I don’t cry often and I don’t allow myself to cry often. Crying to me is a waste of energy and a waste of time.” But talking about crying can be very humanizing. And it seems to have worked well for her.

The New York Post’s “Page Six” reported that Kate even cried at a taping for the new talk show she may be co-hosting; produced by Telepictures and modeled on The View, it’s to be a chat show about working moms, with panelists including former Early Show anchor Rene Syler and Food Network host Paula Deen. Kate “broke down in tears over the pressure of her divorce on her eight kids,” said the gossip column.

We get to talking about that, about the pressure on her children—not just from the divorce, but the intense media attention upon them and their parents. Kate admits they have been “acting out” lately. “I’m trying to give them the grace to see, if they’re acting out of line, I’m trying to look deeper into why that is,” she says. “Why the kids are acting out. Cause it’s all inter-related. I mean, they don’t see it, but it’s all interconnected.”

“They miss him,” she says, meaning Jon. “They say they miss him. I imagine they say the same thing when I’m away … ”

The TLC publicist who is with us that day, Joanna Brahim, looks apoplectic. Kids acting out, being upset about their parents’ divorce—this isn’t part of the Kate Plus Eight story line. “We should probably stop there,” she says, after a minute.

And stop there I planned to do. But Jon and Kate kept coming. And coming.

On October 1, Jon appeared on Larry King Live, giving Kate a mighty shove in their on-air sumo match by deciding to appear as a responsible parent. He wore a suit (and his cubic-zirconia earrings) and said he wanted his children off their reality program. “It’s not healthy for my kids to be on the show,” he said. “It’s detrimental to them.” This revelation came to him, Jon said, as “an epiphany”—it’s unclear whether this was before or after TLC dropped his name from the series.

Jon said that he had filed a lawsuit seeking to shut down production of the show, and his lawyer, Mark Heller, said that the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry investigation would reveal that “they never got a permit for the kids to act.” Jon also said that he and Kate had made about a million dollars in the past year. He said he believed Kate wanted to continue the series to “financially benefit herself.” Kate refuses to comment on financial matters.

A few days later, on October 5, Kate was back on the Today show, crying again. Crying poor. Jon had defied a court-ordered arbitrator and withdrawn $230,000 from a joint account of theirs, she claimed—supposedly their only liquid assets—leaving her only $1,000. (Jon and his attorney denied her allegations, though on October 13 a family court in Norristown, Pennsylvania, ordered him to return to his wife $180,000 he had drained from the account.) “You’ve left your children and their mother unable to pay for the roof over their heads.… I need that money to provide for them,” Kate said, weeping. Regarding the show being temporarily put on hold, pending Jon’s complaint, she said, “Over the weekend I told [the kids] that we’re not filming at this point. And actually, times eight, there was wailing and sobbing. They love our crew, they love the interaction, they love the events. There is nothing harmful about it. They are angry.”

On October 16, TLC sued Jon for breach of contract, and for allegedly being paid to appear on other shows and for making “unauthorized disclosures.”

In the second week of October, Jon and Kate were on the cover of nearly every tabloid again. “Revenge! Inside Their Nasty Divorce,” said Us. In the third week, the cover of In Touch showed a picture of Jon pulling his daughter by the ponytail, with the headline “Jon: A Danger to His Kids?”

Will this ever end? “Sadly, I think the only thing we can be sure of now,” says Janice Min, “is 10, 15 years down the road, the E! True Hollywood Story: The Gosselin Kids.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2009/10/jon-and-kate-gosselin-200910

Good Lord! Who is this person? It seems like it's someone who actually works for Kate possibly? How on earth did they get this info. and quotes from Kate? If it's real, I'm pretty speechless.