I really hadn’t been paying much attention to the whole Jon and Kate hullabaloo. I’m not a celebrity gossip rag reader and I’ve been pretty much forced to give up t.v. until the earth just slows the hell down and gives me a couple more hours each day. (And Jon and Kate isn’t even close to making my t.v. short list.) But there I was on Saturday night, standing in line at the drugstore with a box of diapers on my hip, and realizing that they were still all over the weekly covers. (And ZOMG it looks like Brad and Angie might be breaking up.)
It got me thinking, though, about our facination with the reality couple. Sure, it was their sextuplets that originally landed them their own show, but the kids are really peripheral now, aren’t they? This marital scandel has catapulted Jon and Kate into the realm of real celebrity. They are even better than celebrities insofar as we feel entitled to sift through the sordid details of their misery. I mean, sure, we’ll gobble up every iota of rumour and innuendo about regular celebs, too, but there is a sense that we are snooping and that just maybe these stars do have a claim to some amount of privacy. But Jon and Kate are asking for it, aren’t they? They sold out their children’s right to a private life by signing up for this t.v. show and are money-hungry, limelight-loving egomanics. It seems, is the general idea, that they deserve it.
Especially Kate. Tying nicely into the whole bad-mothering-is-the-new cool trend, is our distaste for anyone exhibiting the traditional traits of a good mother. You know, like organized and firm and hard-working and neat and cautious. To which I respond, sheesh. I know how hard it is to feel like a nagging shrew all day just to get two kids safely clothed and fed and transported though an average day. (And sometimes even bathed!) You hear your own voice echoing the same bloody things over and over and over and it makes you nauseated. Then again, I know I don’t even come close to approaching Kate’s standard of order and cleanliness. And I guess she is a bit uptight.
This kind of judgment, the kind that was only doled out behind your in-laws closed doors and muttered under breaths at the PTA meeting, is now as widely aired as Jon and Kate’s personal affairs. Because, as my husband wrote recently in this Eye Weekly article, we are living in an age that’s just as much about exhibitionism as it is about peeping. Every opinion, be it a well-articulated critique or a lazy lowly sneer, elbows for it’s cut of the internet. (Tip: there’s a lot more room at the top.) Collectively, though, we can’t get enough.
Dooce, for example, is a talented and compelling story-teller. But she’s more than that. She pushes past honesty and lays bare her inner-most feelings and thoughts. In doing so, she also gives legions of people the full-time obsession of cutting her down in the public sphere. As do Jon and Kate, but even more so for the medium of television still has no equal when it comes to influencing the hearts and minds of America. (Yeah, and the rest of the world.) And people are lining up as we speak for the next big reality show that will offer EVEN MORE private details and 24 hour footage live-streaming to the internet.
Like it or not, this is our brave new world. Anyone else for a bit of self-censorship?
(Image courtesy of orphanjones on Flickr.)