Jon, You Ignorant Slut

What I wouldn't give for Dan Aykroyd to tie up Larry King, hijack his CNN anchor chair and deliver this apparently apt one-liner to the whiny-assed, self-involved, axe-grinding, (allegedly) ass-grabbing, globe-trotting, douche-bagging worse half of Kate Gosselin.

As much as I've tried to avoid the crapola circling her reality TV half-wit husband, Jon Gosselin's increasingly egregious behavior screams out on every supermarket check-out rag, entertainment web site and, now, TV news show in existence.

Somebody has to tell this father of eight, "Mr. Gosselin, despite your uncanny resemblance to his first name, you, sir, are no Dick Van Patten."


Still, Jon decided "Eight" was enough right around the time TLC dropped his moniker from the now less-arithmetically-complex "Kate Plus Eight." Suddenly, after several months of self-absorbed galavanting with one or more women six to ten years his junior (biologically speaking, anyway), he's had an "epiphany" and decided the three-year-old cable reality TV cash cow that's supported him, his wife, their eight children and his costly lifestyle is now "unhealthy" for his kids.

Or for his ego. After putting up for months with his unprofessional and sickening shenanigans—including telling ABC's 20/20 that he "despises" his impressionable, young children's mother—TLC finally put him in his place. And now, miraculously, he's concerned about saving his family. What. Ev. Er.

At least that Ewok dude married to Heidi Montag is bright enough to consider getting a vasectomy. If only Mr. Gosselin were as smart as an Ewok.

I offer the following anecdotes to Jon and/or his sympathizers as a cautionary tale. Not that he would head down this path, but his erratic actions seem to suggest that, under certain conditions, his immaturity and petulance could make him vulnerable to continued stupidity.

My sister married an unkind and infantile man in the mid-'80s. They quickly had three children. He sat on his ass while my sister took care of everything—from screaming babies, dirty dishes, errands, potentially dangerous kitchen spills and so on and so on and so on. When he decided to run off and have a mid-life crisis in his early 30s, he didn't have nannies, bodyguards and production assistants standing by to enable his self-indulgent conduct. Mr. Gosselin seems to have conveniently forgotten how much his TV series has helped him and his children as he tries to cope with life's stresses.

If he truly now has his kids' best interests at heart, I wonder if he's prepared to pay his soon-to-be-ex-wife alimony, along with child support. Does Divorced Dads Club pony up the big bucks?

I also wonder if he's prepared to stop sowing his wild oats long enough to focus on eight kids' emotional and mental development. I know 22-year-olds think little kids are cute and all, but will Jon's "soul mate," Hailey Glassman, step up to the step mom plate? Something tells me that, without his money-making series and accompanying celebrity, Mr. Gosselin may be on his own in the not-so-distant future. Nannies are expensive, after all, and he's learned the hard way that they can talk to tabloids. He might have to settle on daycare and a mute babysitter.

I hope for his eight kids' sake that he grows up and puts his reality TV money where his mouth is after this show ends. How much is insurance for a new Mercedes-Benz ML350 SUV, a new Porsche Cayenne and a 2007 Nissan Nismo 350Z? Hmmm. I hope none of those kids needs serious counseling, medical or dental work in the years ahead. Vroom vroom.


My ex-brother-in-law, who eventually took up occasional work as a truck driver, decided he'd "found Jesus" on an Oklahoma turnpike in 1992. Apparently, Jesus told him not to send money home to Ohio to pay his family's heating bill in December. As my sister and her three kids sat freezing in their squalid little house hundreds of miles from the rest of her family, my parents and I turned on the TV to see her idiot husband in a "heartwarming" story on a Tulsa news station. He literally gave another trucker the Member's Only coat off his back while telling a reporter, "We truckers have to stick together."

Mr. Gosselin, please do not purchase a Member's Only jacket. Not that you wouldn't pay your family's heating bill, but those pneumatic soul mates can distract you when they get nipply, er, nippy.

Shortly thereafter, my sister's moronic mate left her and her pre-school-aged children. My mom and I moved them to Oklahoma and eventually, after I graduated from the University of Tulsa and got established in Los Angeles, to Southern California. The kids' idiot father never spoke to them again, never sent a card and—unless forced by the state of California—almost never paid child support.

My mom, my sister and I made sure they had what they needed—including, first and foremost, love and attention—but we could never repair the damage their asshole father did to them by refusing to grow up. And, let me tell you, it was not easy not telling my niece and nephews—whom I consider my kids—how much I despised their father. No kid needs to hear that. Besides, they learned soon enough on their own that his actions spoke for themselves.

Think carefully, Mr. Gosselin. Maybe Kate Plus Eight isn't such a bad idea after all.