Exhibit A in our demise: Jon & Kate

Several years ago, a few months after the U.S. invaded Iraq under W.’s orders, my friend John said, “You could watch television all night long and have no idea our country’s at war.” Not too long after that, my friend Julie started commenting about how chilling it seemed to her that updates from the world of reality television were tucked in among headlines announcing news that was actually newsworthy. Once I started paying attention, I couldn’t help but notice that sites like CNN and MSN were indeed doing just that: under their “news” banners were tales about people being voted out of clubs and off of islands, people getting laughed off stage, people breaking up and hooking up and making out and making off and then breaking down – crashing, really – on more of these insidious shows than I could keep organized in my mind. What if it’s intentional? my friend wondered out loud. What if this is a way to confuse and disorient people?

I didn’t contemplate those questions seriously until my television-watching bender began a year ago. Holy shit. The latest trick from this house of horrors is Chris Cuomo’s interview with Jon, of Jon & Kate Plus Eight. Chris Cuomo, who comes across as so boorishly dumb that I’m surprised Daddy hasn’t revoked his usage of the family name, sat down with Jon to get “his side of the story.” It ran between the swine flu update and the weather, and I remained on my couch with my coffee and watched. Jon’s been mistreated by his wife, and misunderstood by the media, and, as the father of twins and a set of six, his twenties went by so quickly it’s almost as if the decade was stolen from him. Kate, meanwhile, has lost some weight and has written a book that she’s been whoring on the ‘news’ shows, which seem unable to get enough of it. As someone who writes and reads and has aspirations to write a book and who knows lots of people who are extraordinarily talented writers with intelligent manuscripts languishing in the reject pile, it’s years beyond insulting and demoralizing to know that a publisher jumped at the chance to bring us her story.

Cuomo’s interview on Good Morning America, sadly, wasn’t an independent piece but a teaser for an hour-long chat with Jon on an evening news program – 20/20, I believe, the newsworthiness of which is debatable from what I’ve heard. I resist paranoia. I reject conspiracy theories quickly, and with no mercy. But when it comes to this sort of crap my resolve falters. Why do Jon & Kate have a television program in the first place? And why do the networks legitimize the show by including it in their news coverage? And why do advertisers pay for it? And, given that there are only so many minutes in each day, if a certain amount of them are dedicated to the Jon & Kate enterprise, what stories are we not hearing?