Jon and Kate Plus...Hate?
As a child I remember someone telling me about Chinese water torture (being immobilized and having water drip on your forehead or some other predetermined point incessantly) and thought, "how stupid is that?" But as I've come to learn, there are three things that the Chinese can do better than anyone else:
1) Breed (A father who wanted me to marry his daughter once told me, "Who are the best lovers? Chinese men! How else can you explain 1 billion children?!")
2) Xiao long bao
3) Torture
Seriously. Think about it. Getting thrown in the iron maiden? Being quartered? Chips, dips, chains, whips? (I miss that Weird Science movie!) Weak sauce. European torture is to Rachel Ray as Chinese water torture is to Anthony Bourdain. No comparison. (And besides, Rachel Ray is just plain irritating like an incomplete BM.) The reason being that though the former causes extreme physical pain, they are all temporary, while the latter is primarily psychological and is as unremitting as post-taco diarrhea in Tijuana. Psychological always trumps the physical. Which do you think is more torture for a young woman, having a butt face with a festering abscess and not caring, or thinking that she has a butt face with a festering abscess and caring about it? (Note: This does not apply if said young woman is Amy Winehouse.)
Now what does this have to do with Jon and Kate plus eight? Everything!
In the spirit of being honest, I have never really watched the show. I watched one episode and never came back. Why would I spend 30 minutes watching another couple sans Cosby moniker raising their kids? That's 30 minutes I can never get back! So all I know is what I read on the internet, which, of course, makes it 110% completely true.
Anyway, Jon and Kate, for the uninformed, are a couple with 8 children (twins and sextuplets, I believe) who are the focus of a reality show, following their daily lives as they raise their brood. The other day I saw a link about how
Jon was caught out with another woman while visiting his mom in another state. The blogosphere, surprisingly, was more pro-Jon than anti-Jon. Hard core viewers were quick to point out that Kate is abusive towards her husband with her
unremitting henpecking and condescending remarks. She loves the fame and fortune while he wants his family to just be left alone. She apparently does all the talking and
always cuts Jon off in the interviews and the
one time Jon cut her off she went jihad on him on national TV. US Magazine even mentions her berating him once for *breathing* on the show. (The rumor is that they are already separated, but are "staying together" for the show.)
While I do not condone cheating in any way, shape or form, I can certainly understand where Jon is coming from, because when you think about it...
All men get Chinese water tortured by their women.
Whether it's our hair, belly fat, ambition, flatulence, salary, choice of friends, diet, alcohol consumption, World of Warcraft, parenting, or Battlestar Galactica marathons (so say we all!), each and every neanderthal has something that his more evolved significant other prods him incessantly about, like water dripping on your forehead in a Beijing prison (before they take out your kidney and sell it to some rich American noncompliant with his diabetes medication).
The reason this causes so much distress is that, in general, women find the need to change or henpeck their men, while men are comfortable being who they are and abhor change. You know, the whole irresistible force vs. immovable object thangamabob. And Jon, it seems, has had enough.
But are men the only victims here? While women like to express their henpecking verbally, men do it with their expectations, rather than their mouths. We expect our women to do most of the housework, even though they also have careers. We expect them through the years to maintain the same body they had that first night we saw them and had to pick our jaws off the floor. We expect them to act beautiful in public after giving birth, despite the constipation, hemorrhoids, bloating and weight gain. We expect a roll in the hay at any given moment, whether or not our breath smells like Shaquille O'Neal's armpits and our body like spoiled feta cheese.
So while we don't necessarily henpeck our women, our expectations are always there, burdensome like buckets of water incessantly pouring on their shoulders.
I don't profess to know everything about Jon and Kate. I'm sure that Jon shares some culpability in their deteriorating relationship, but the sad thing is that in the midst of this struggle between Jon supporters and Kate supporters, everyone has forgotten about the children. So caught up in the hate, they forgot about the eight. Are we not the same way?
In our squabbles both big and small with our significant others, we forget about what brought us together in the first place. Love gets displaced by hate and open hands turn into pointed fingers.
Just like how everytime I watch J&K+8 I lose 30 minutes of my life that I can't get back, every moment you spend allowing hate to displace love is a moment of love that you can never get back.
And in a world where every clock counts down and not forward, I can think of nothing sadder than that.
Have a great rest of the week! Go Houston! Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA!
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Comments (22)
"Would somebody please think of the children!" - Helen Lovejoy
And then for executions...Chinese ones are terrible: thousand cuts...
Hahah, yeah, Rachael Ray is getting to be annoying. Entertaining writing!
i thought this was going to be a typical jon & kate hate post but it turned out to be sweeter than i thought. awwwwwwww.
and dude, i frakking LOVE battlestar galactica and i would sit through a marathon any day! have you seen caprica? it was a frakking good pilot. cant wait for the show.
and since i'm originally from houston - GO HOUSTON!
"every moment you spend allowing hate to displace love is a moment of love that you can never get back." Love it!
I've only seen one episode of J&K+8, too. I'd rather...sleep. hahah
i have to apologize for not reading through the whole post...because i was just skimming through really quick and have to get back to studying...but i have to say you are the FIRST person i have "met" that dislikes rachel ray! she is SO annoying!!! i am glad i am not alone.
sort of sad... but in the end with 8 mouths to feed, it was probably hard for them to not do the tv show... so I side with Kate, although she is pretty dominating over the dude, but isn't that bc she's white? in that case, he should have known what he was getting himself into?
your posts are always so worth the wait
I have not found any relationship that has survived a reality show, so it's only inevitable that this one would fail also.
and I hope one of the previous comments is not insinuating that 'white women' are dominating and we're all the same...
i personally find that the show is so realistic that people WANT to find something weird or create something, so it gets dragged into the trash like all other reality shows. i think you should wail on "gene simmons family jewels". that's so fake & scripted, it makes me gag. i love the kids in J & K and that's it. I'd prefer watching it if the kids were the only ones in the show.
I love the incomplete BM/psych theory relation
they shoulda never had all dem babies...
Awww great post. I've never watched the show so I really don't know what to say although am surprised to see the net taking sides with Jon.
I'm trying to think about what kind of torture I"d rather undergo... and I don't know man! physical pain scares me! hehe
This is television. Of course it's scripted / edited / produced. If it weren't, we wouldn't be watching. Who wants to watch boring couples doing mundane things? We already have enough of it ourselves. Let's watch a train wreck instead, with cute kids and appropriate product placements!
Your point is well taken, however. What about the kids? Are they going to grow up screwed up because their parents made bad value judgements? They should not commit to another season, and commit to fixing their marriage and family first.
Good point.. I think both parties are somewhat guilty most of the time, though I've never watched Jon & Kate..
i was a jon and kate fan. i was fascinated by the show and the adorable factor because hell, my possible babies (if i should have them) will probably look similar to those kids. and that was my draw to them. but in my career like my life. i have always been an observer of other people - and based on what people choose to show about themselves, it has allowed me to decide what i like and would want to learn. and what i dislike and would work to prevent.
this show has made me realize a few things
1. i have no desire to live in the public eye. nor would i subject my hypothetical children to it.
2. i have no bones about watching other people go through stuff because i learn from my perception of their mistakes. and on the off chance that i ended up with eight kids, i have a better idea (although still no real clue) of what it means to have that many children all at one time.
3. jon has no right to be upset - he and his wife made the decision together to be on tv with their children. if he really doesn't like it, he needs to tell kate so. and kate should listen to her husband and respect his feelings and work to a mutual understanding. but until that day, when they turn off cameras in their home. he is a public figure and should expect people to get the wrong idea and speculate. it's like celebrities who complain about no privacy. don't put yourself out there then. protect your privacy.
ok now i have to do some work.
i feel the same way about wasted time. but sad to say, i waste it all the time. ><
i agree with everything in this post aside from the lakers hate.
Reminds me of that saying, women want their men to change we don't. We don't want women to change, but they do. >_<
re: Breed (A father who wanted me to marry his daughter once told me, "Who are the best lovers? Chinese men! How else can you explain 1 billion children?!")
- It's funny because the "older" Chinese generation are never one to do public displays of affection but there might be some truth to it as we are after one of the world's biggest population. Either that, or Chinese people really just like to leave their legacies behind. Because people can really enjoy sex as it is or for a purpose such as procreation. But it's probably a bit of both =P
re: xiao long bao - ohhhh. I love those xiao long bao. Very tasty. I just had some last night. Gotta love those baos! =)
i totally agree
Do you ever know how to push my buttons.
The whole concept of that stupid show just makes me postal. I'm a stalwart supporter of zero population growth and this whole glorification of unsustainable numbers of progeny disgusts me. Then there's the "neutered Asian man" stereotype going on. Sure, he's fertile enough to produce a dozen babies and driven enough to get a lady on the side, but that whole "henpecked" image? Does great things for the trophy Asian boyfriends everywhere, I'm sure.
And you just HAD to bring up Rachel Ray.
I think these over-breeders need to be given the water torture, but instead of water, use "E.V.O.O." and see how that does the trick. Arrrrgh!!!
So... the sextuplets were born here at humble little Hershey Medical Center. But the stories are larger than life when it comes to Kate Gosselin. Apparantly she exasperated even our most angelic of nurses. And when the show brought them back to HMC last year so that the kids could see where they were born, the plan was to have all of the nurses and staff standing in the rotunda by the elevators so that everyone could clap & cheerwhen the family came through the doors (or so the plan went, per the show peeps). However, none of our staff was excited about such a reappearance and they couldn't summon enough people to do it... so that segment of the show was canned.
Indeed, you have to feel bad for the kids. Not an easy life for them, no matter how you see it. I do hope the best for them!
If Rose is a 300 pound wahine, she better not be a tita or else I'm dead.
Do you speak pidgin? I can't. I tried to when I called my neighbors to complain about their dog, but it came out sounding more like I had a European accent.
I've watched the show a few times in the past year. You can't fully trust what you see in the show after it's edited, but it did look like all Kate did was constantly pick at Jon. She said herself he was frequently with the kids, so not like he was a slacker father. Oh well, it's sad.
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