KATE GOSSELIN: HOW SHE FOOLED THE WORLD - THE RISE AND FALL OF A REALITY TV QUEEN

by Robert Hoffman

  Later that same day, December 29, 2008, Jon forwarded another email to Kate from a woman named “Joy R,” who wrote that she had a friend in Columbia, South Carolina, who was expecting sextuplets. She said that her friend, Courtney, and Courtney’s husband, Allen, were “grounded, solid Christians” who, like Jon and Kate, would not consider selective reduction. Joy explained that the couple was anxious and scared about the health of Courtney and the babies, but they knew God was in control and would “lead them through the tough days ahead.” She then asked whether Jon and Kate would consider sending Courtney an email because she was a big fan of the show and she would be thrilled to get it.

  Kate’s reply to Jon once again showed off her sensitive, supportive, empathetic side. Kate made it clear that she viewed Courtney as a potential threat. She stated, “You realize…. She’s only 8 wks along …….”

  December 29, 2008, was a busy day for email. Julie May was on vacation, and Kate sent her an email telling her she missed her. Julie replied that she would call Kate the next day, and that she thought she would have a few things for her to sign. She told Kate that she missed her, too.

  Kate then sent Julie another email telling her that she was looking forward to talking to her. Kate said, “I hate when the business world takes a vacation!!!! :)” and “Vacation is soon over.... Thank goodness!” Kate also needed to let Julie know that people were annoying her. She said, “I’ve emailed Angela and Karen numerous times now with very little action and it’s annoying me! Will wait to hear tomorrow then may have to send you after them again! :) And the email from Jeff- ugh annoying! Your thoughts!?”

  On December 30, 2008, Kate had a conversation with her publicist Laurie Goldberg at Discovery Communications. Laurie wanted to know if Kate would like to answer any questions from journalists who were looking to interview her. Kate wanted questions submitted to her via email to play it safe. When prodded a bit by Goldberg that some of the reporters actually wanted to speak to Kate, Kate asked if there was “anyone worth talking to?:)” Kate went on to say that “if it’s worth it” she would do it, but only “if it isn’t someone dumb!”

  Pot meet Kettle.

  Kate did manage to answer one tabloid reporter’s question. The reporter wanted Kate to give some advice to Tom Cruise, who recently said in an interview that he wanted 10 kids with his wife Katie Holmes.

  Kate’s reply? “He’s a Brad Pitt wanna be…..he’s a jerk! But don’t let them print any of that!”

  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO KATE – PART 2

  “… I need you to know, don’t believe what you read

  unless you hear it from that person.”

  – Kate Gosselin

  As mentioned earlier, Kate was laser-focused on turning herself into a Martha Stewart-like character so she could cash in on as much as she possibly could. Her eight children were mere props – pawns in her game to accumulate as much wealth and notoriety as she could.

  Kate loved the idea of becoming the “working mom’s Martha Stewart,” but she didn’t like or respect Martha Stewart herself. Kate believed she was better than Martha Stewart even before she had her first set of babies. Kate’s mind jumps to the last chapter without reading the book.

  When Kate took the kids and Jon, along with Aunt Jodi, to New York City to appear on the Martha Stewart show, she was very disrespectful to, and unappreciative of, Martha. “Kate already thought she was better than Martha Stewart!” a source told me.

  When I was going through the photos Kate took with her own camera during that trip, I didn’t find a single photo of Kate with Martha Stewart. It seemed odd that Aunt Jodi wanted a picture with Martha, but Kate did not. “Kate wouldn’t give Martha the satisfaction of asking to be in a picture with her,” said my source. When they were taping the show in Martha’s studio, Kate made sure to stick Jon in the middle next to Martha. “Kate did not want a side-by-side comparison to Martha Stewart.” Not yet anyway.

  One of Kate’s earlier entries into Martha Stewart’s territory was a dismal failure. Kate’s Christian book publisher, Zondervan, was going to release Kate’s next big “bestseller,” a cookbook called Love Is In The Mix: Making Meals Into Memories, but canceled it in its tracks. They didn’t cancel it because the timing was bad (it was to be released around the time that the Gosselin marriage scandal was making headlines) – as it was widely reported – they canceled it because they discovered that the recipes in Kate’s cookbook were not actually hers. They found out that she had taken recipes from various sources, changed the names, and tried to pass them off as her own.

  This isn’t such a shocking revelation when you consider that Kate Gosselin can’t cook. “She’s a nightmare in the kitchen. All she does is make a mess,” a Gosselin very insider told me.

  The public caught on to Kate’s recipe “borrowing” right away and went crazy posting comments on every website and blog that gave the book a mention. Zondervan took notice, and Kate’s cookbook was toast.

  Another way in which Kate Gosselin wanted to be like Martha Stewart, yet be even more admired by America’s moms, had to do with her self-proclaimed organizational skill. Kate has always said, and said on the RV episode of Kate Plus Ei8ht, “I’m the most organized person on the planet!”

  On THE PLANET! Not, “In my house,” but “On the planet!” She takes hyperbole to a whole new level, especially when she is singing her own praises. But of course, that’s not an accident. Remember President Clinton’s phone call to Bobby McCaughey? “You know, when those kids all go off to school, you will be the best-organized manager in the U.S.”

  Kate Gosselin is no Martha Stewart, and never could be, no matter how hard she and Julie Carson May/TLC/Discovery tried to create that image and shove it down the public’s throats. Pretending to be organized and actually being organized are two entirely different things. And no matter how hard Kate tries to make it seem like she is multi-talented, she will always be far too lazy to succeed on her own without her children.

  Kate and TLC liked to depict Jon as a lazy slob. They made it appear as if Kate was the one doing all the work and keeping everything tidy, but that was one big, fat lie. It was just one more deception intended to build the “Kate” brand.

  I’ve been inside Kate’s home, during the divorce when Jon still lived there. I’ve been in the apartment above the garage when Jon lived there after he was vanquished from the main part of the home. I was in Jon’s luxury New York City apartment. I was in Jon’s Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, apartment, and I’ve been in Jon’s current house. I have also been in Jon’s cars. Here’s what I can tell you from first-hand experience.

  Jon Gosselin is a neat freak – almost to the point of being compulsive. Every one of his living spaces I have seen has been very well organized and clean. His clothes are always folded and ironed and put away. His rugs are vacuumed daily. There are never dishes in the sink. He has drawer organizers, closet organizers, and cabinet organizers. His pantry is organized. His windows are clean. His car is always spotless, inside and out, and he always has a new air freshener in place.

  And guess who does all that cleaning and organizing? Jon does. I’m an artsy, metrosexual kind of guy, but next to Jon Gosselin, I’m a filthy pig. Since I’ve known Jon, he has had no help with his living spaces or with taking care of the kids, except from whichever girlfriend he happened to be with at the time. And there were no neat-freaks among them, believe me. Kate wanted that neat-freak, organized persona for herself, so she stole it from Jon.

  I’ve seen some of Kate’s personal areas, and I’ve looked in her cars, and they were nowhere near as organized or clean as anything I have ever seen of Jon’s. She has piles of clothes on top of suitcases, and laundry in piles waiting for someone else to do it. She piles up her dishes until someone else does them. She feeds the kids on paper plates so she can just throw them away. So much for her being “green” nonsense.

  If you are looking for proof of Kate’s lack of domestic skills, and her foul temperament to boot, go
back and watch the RV Trip episode of Kate Plus Ei8ht. Pay attention to the scene where Kate decides she is going to vacuum. It speaks volumes about Kate’s relationship, or lack thereof, with a vacuum cleaner. I’ve watched Jon vacuum, many times. I, myself, have vacuumed hundreds of times. I know what it looks like when someone has actually handled a vacuum cleaner before. In that episode, you will see that Kate has absolutely no idea how to even handle the thing.

  In the vacuuming scene from the episode, where they are talking inside the RV and Kate is standing in the background doing nothing, her paid best friend Jamie announces that she’s going to vacuum the floors. Kate’s eyes light up as she gets the idea that vacuuming is something she should be doing to maintain her brand of being the neat freak. Kate totally steals Jamie’s moment for herself, but it’s what happens next that is so funny – and so telling.

  Kate storms around looking for the vacuum cleaner – you know – the vacuum cleaner that she told us in that very same episode that she has been using to clean all of the floors every day during the trip. This is supposedly day six of the trip, according to TLC, and yet Kate had no idea where the vacuum was. Once she finds it, she bangs her head and hurts herself, of course, because she’s helpless. She then grabs the vacuum and drags it violently across the rock-covered ground, banging it all the way to the RV.

  Besides a 6-year-old child, who would be physically incapable of lugging a vacuum, who in their right mind would ever do something like that? Whether the vacuum was yours personally, or whether it was part of the RV or TLC’s property, who would ever drag a vacuum over rocks rather than carry it? Kate has been telling us for several years now about how much she exercises and works out, so it couldn’t possibly be that she wasn’t strong enough to lift the darn thing. My grandmother used to carry her vacuum up and down three flights of stairs. Surely Kate has picked up one or more of her children at some point and can lift the weight of a vacuum cleaner. Kate had no idea what to do with the vacuum cleaner, but she sure put on a show for the filming of her “most real” reality.

  YOU WIN SOME; YOU LOSE SOME

  In 2009, Julie May, the Gosselin’s manager, was hard at work trying to secure lucrative endorsement deals for Jon and Kate with various companies. For a potential deal with Hershey and Kraft, Julie May worked with a representative from Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing, Inc. She used an article from the Baltimore Sun, which talked about the return of the American family to network television, as a marketing tool. The article, written by David Zurawik, also known as Z on TV, was titled “Family Matters for TLC and its Viewers.” Zurawik wrote that “family fare is making a comeback in a big way on cable channel TLC (The Learning Channel) these days, particularly with young female viewers.” He also said:

  Jon & Kate Plus 8, a reality TV show that follows the everyday lives of Jon and Kate Gosselin and their eight children, is one of the highest-rated series on cable TV with an audience of 3.7 million viewers. It is the top show on advertiser-supported cable with young women, one of TV's most desired demographic groups. It beats out such series as TNT's The Closer.

  The Gosselins have been on the cover of Good Housekeeping magazine and were featured last week on The Oprah Winfrey Show, a barometer of mass popularity if ever there was one. Their success has driven year-to-year, double-digit growth for the once-foundering Maryland-based operation - lifting TLC this year into the Top 10 basic cable channels.

  Thinking this would be great, positive publicity, Julie May passed the article along on March 16, 2009, to “Marc I,” the Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing, Inc. representative who was working on the Hershey and Kraft deals. She told him she thought he might be interested in getting some viewership stats.

  But things didn’t work out the way Julie May and Kate had hoped. On the morning of March 19, 2009, Marc sent Julie an email informing her that Hershey and Kraft were probably going to pass on working with the Gosselins. Marc told Julie that “the recent round of news regarding Jon and Kate has caused the client to put this on hold, and it may no longer happen.” He said they were concerned that the story would “dominate their media tour and take away from the S’mores messages.” What this really meant was that Hershey and Kraft were smart enough to distance themselves from the Gosselin train wreck that was happening with the messy divorce and all the bad press.

  That afternoon, Julie May gave Kate the bad news, saying that it was very frustrating. After hearing that the deal was dead, Kate forwarded the email to Jon and said: “Lost another $100,000...read below... wonderful!”

  One piece of the “recent round of news” about Jon and Kate that portrayed them in a bad light was from a March 2009 article entitled, “Show Biz: Jon + Kate + 8 = $$$.” Written by Jessica Remo and published in Philadelphia magazine, the article painted a very unflattering picture of the Gosselins, Kate in particular. Even more disturbing than the critical picture of Kate and the entire Gosselin drama was what the author had to say about the possible outcome for the children. This is what she wrote:

  If Jon and Kate Gosselin have sold their children’s privacy, we the viewers are the guilty buyers, even as we find it harder and harder to see the pair as the guileless, relatable-to, in-over-their-heads parents we once knew and adored. Looking ahead, the Gosselins’ challenges are still real and many, though different: How will they teach their kids to be humble, and that normal people don’t get to run the bases at Phillies games? That everything isn’t free and yours when you want it? That fame is, by and large, capricious and fleeting? Only time will tell how their eight will deal with having grown up in a home studio, in front of cameras and fans, as the world watched.

  “As their friend, as somebody who loves the kids, I was always the one saying [to Jon and Kate], ‘Okay, be careful.’ Because they’re not just a commodity, they’re people,” says one of the kids’ former babysitters. “And someday will come and … you know? Nothing comes free. Everything, everything, has a price. And because I love them, I don’t want them to pay a price that’s too dear.”

  Despite losing out on some endorsement deals, plenty of other companies continued to be interested in using the Gosselins to promote their products. In this next case, the product happened to be a new album by singer/songwriter Kenny Loggins.

  On May 15, 2009, Julie May received an email from “Maria K,” vice president of media relations at Walt Disney Records, who was aware that the Gosselin children had been dancing to Loggins’ song, “Footloose,” on an episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8, and that Jon had mentioned he loved Kenny and wished he could meet him one day. Maria said she was working with Loggins on a new album, called “All Join In,” which was due out that summer. She also said he had a concert near Lancaster, PA, scheduled for July 17, and they would be open to arranging a meeting with the Gosselins “to be incorporated into the show somehow.”

  Julie May forwarded that email to Kate asking for her thoughts about a possible meet-and-greet with Loggins. Now, the chance to meet Kenny Loggins in and of itself would have been a thrill for most normal people, but Kate Gosselin isn’t most people, and she certainly doesn’t want to be treated as normal. Always thinking she is more important than she is, Kate had the nerve to request that Kenny Loggins give them a private outdoor concert at their home. She did say, however, that “We will go to the concert if that is only option though...”

  THE TERRIBLE TABLOID EXPLOITATION RUMOR

  On May 21, 2009, Laurie Goldberg of Discovery sent Julie May an email informing Julie that US Weekly planned to publish a possibly damaging story about Jon and Kate exploiting their children. In Laurie Goldberg’s email, which had the subject line “Terrible rumor I am hearing,” she told Julie May she wanted to give her a heads up about the US Weekly cover piece tentatively titled “What About the Kids?” She said it had a big shot of the family as the main image and it alleged that Jon and Kate are terrible, exploitative parents who could legally be sued.

  Julie May forwarded Kate the email, telling her that US We
ekly was “stooping to new lows,” and saying it was “Unbelievable.” Kate didn’t seem terribly concerned about the charges. In her reply, she said she wondered whether US Weekly was trolling “gwop” (Gosselins Without Pity website) for their topics, and made a comment about being tired of US Weekly. She then said that all US Weekly was doing was increasing their ratings at that point, and ended with a “Thank you US weekly!” It is interesting that Kate didn’t say one word about being incensed that they were being portrayed inaccurately.

  Kate couldn’t blame all the bad press on just the tabloids. An article in Vanity Fair magazine entitled “The Unreal Rise of Jon and Kate Gosselin,” (Google it) written by Nancy Jo Sales, a Vanity Fair contributing editor, was published on October 19, 2009, just a few months after I started writing and reporting for US Weekly. Jon and Kate Gosselin’s marriage had been publicly unraveling for several months by that time, and Kate’s star was on the rise. The Discovery/TLC/Kate-concocted smear campaign against John had reached full force. In the article, the author’s observations provided an objective, eyewitness look at the demanding, annoyed and annoying, self-absorbed celebrity that is Kate Gosselin. The following are excerpts from that article.

  “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, senior vice president of communications at the Learning Channel, 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.