Slippery Slope

I'm watching John and Kate Plus 8 tonight. It's the season premier, the first episode since the tabloids started posting pictures and making accusations about them. It's not over yet, but it doesn't look good for them. It's pretty obvious that John is angry and Kate is hurt. And I don't know the whole story. No one but John and Kate do, but I just hate to see them fail. And yes I think she's a bit much. I know she's not always kind to John. And it frustrates me to listen to them sometimes. But I can't even fathom what it's like to parent eight children. I'm not the biggest Kate fan, but I've always felt like she and John were the original people out there saying "look we couldn't have kids, so we took steps to help and now we have this beautiful family and you can too". But now it looks like they could become part of that statistic, the one where patents of multiples have a higher divorce rate.

I hate to see anyone fail. I hate to think that people can wander so far from the people they were when they were madly in love with each other. Wander so far they don't even recognize the person they are living with. It's just sad. It's even sadder when outside influences make it worse.

Of course I know that there are plenty of people who just don't work, can't function with each other, are even toxic for each other and are probably better off without each other. I know that my household was more stable once my father left. In instances like ours, I know that life was better for my parents not living with one another.

It's still sad to watch the demise of others.

I'd stopped buying and reading tabloids and even the slightly more classy celeb mags when the whole Crazy Brittney stuff was going down. I didn't want anyone to profit from her obvious illness. Now I'm glad I didn't contribute to the profit for any of these John and Kate stories. I just want to smack the paps upside the head.

Yes it's a reality show, yes they opened their lives for us to watch. But isn't that enough? Do we have to hunt them down, wait for them to screw up and take pictures of it? Or worse, just take pictures to imply that they screwed up? What is the line? What can you do when the line is ignored.

Dang those kids are cute though. No matter what anyone else says, John and Kate raise some adorable, sweet, funny kids. I hope they can work things out, not only for those kids, but for themselves too.