The Gosselins: An American travesty

When geese fly south and the harvest moon reigns above patchwork quilts on rolling hills of brown and orange, I look out to my city skyline and wonder why I chose to leave the rural life of exurbia and Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Then I think about Jon and Kate Gosselin of TV's reality show, "Jon & Kate Plus Eight," and all my reasons for quitting God's own country come running back to me.

I never met Jon and Kate but I know them all too well.

Her father was an itinerant Baptist minister from Sinking Springs, and his was a well-respected pediatric dentist from Wyomissing.

She went to nursing school, he dropped out of college. They met at a bar. She sought respectability and a social standing. He needed a woman with a reliable income. They married in the back yard of one of Jon's wealthier friends. Kate thought she had it made.

Then came the kids; two at first and six later, all at one time. They faced an immediate cash drain. So when Welfare turned them down, they prayed on a solution. With God's help and some incredibly adorable and photographic children, they landed a starring roll in their own reality show and moved away from their disapproving neighbors.

Four years later, after hawking the kids for cash on prime time every week, they returned to Berks County and a new big homestead, with much more money and even less class then they had before they left.

His friends thought the whole caper was a hoot. She still couldn't gain admittance into the Junior League.

All this would be commonplace up in the land of the free, where football is the Number One sport on Friday night and skeet shooting is the second on Saturday morning. But the Gosselins have managed to connect to the hearts and souls of many flyover Americans as well.

Before their adoring public on last season's final installment of their show, the Gosselins chose to break up. Seems like Kate, now that she has the money, has decided she can do better. And Jon, now that he has the money, has decided he can't do any worse.

Divorce for the Gosselins is an option for two people who realize they didn't get what they bargained for and don't need what they have.

Now it's onward and ever upward for this pair. As long as the kids have the show, it's only fair that Jon and Kate, relieved of the financial burden of parenthood, should be free to do their own thing.

Americans can't get enough of this tale. It has lust, greed, sex, kids, infidelities and all that money. Money that was hard earned at the hands of the Gosselin children and exploited by their parents' need to be the center of their own universe.

The Gosselins are living the quintessential Berks County dream. They have a bigger house than most and more money than many. But best of all, they got it for free.♦


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