cocoa chanel

Jon Minus Kate Plus 8: The Gosselins Divorce

So the marriage is over for Jon and Kate Gosselin, the Christian parents of fraternal twins and sextuplets that stole America’s heart when their exuberant and loving family of 10 opened their lives on Discovery Health and TLC. And though I can’t say I’m surprised to hear of their divorce–the gossip mongers have been speculating about it ad nauseum for the past six months–I am saddened by the very public dissolution of the Gosselins’ marriage. No one deserves this. To have to explain a divorce to children, family, and friends is hard. To justify that decision on national television as entertainment for an audience of millions of strangers is cruel and unusual punishment.

And what’s likely to be most disappointing about this news will be…well, the news. It’s 11:30 in New York, only hours since the episode announcing their separation aired, and already the headlines blasting alerts of the couple’s heartbreak are spinning a web of speculation, gossip and cruelty online. The media loves to eat its young and spit them out.

So in case we’ve all forgotten, I wanted to jot a quick reminder (to myself included) that these are real people. Those are actual children. The Gosselins aren’t a fictional family dreamed up by producers or knit together by network executives and publicists. Long after we’ve forgotten about the show, perhaps in a few years when we’re greedily consuming the next spoonful of reality drama on television, this family will still exist. We must remember that the comments we make today, the scrutiny and judgment we pass, will live on once the cameras stop rolling.

And I for one don’t need the devastation of Aaden Gosselin weighing on my shoulders. And I certainly don’t want a 15-year-old Leah Gosselin to stumble across my self-righteous words in 10 years while doing a Google search of her family and fall into some sort of crisis. It’s just not right.

So yes, Jon and Kate are divorcing. And our condolences go out to their family, as they go out to all families suffering through a divorce. We pray they find peace in the midst of mourning the loss of their marriage, and we wish them great joy as they forge ahead into a future unknown.

There is much we could say, but let’s leave it that, eh?

Photos courtesy of Michael Pilla, Discovery Communications, LLC.

June 22, 2009 - Posted by cocoa chanel | celebrities, religion, television | divorce, Jon & Kate Plus 8, Jon Gosselin, Kate Gosselin, religion, sextuplets, TLC