I thought she was in trouble for welfare fraud. Are there two octomoms?

narcissist mothers are perfect for reality TV. In fact, it's probably a requirement.

David, I resent you for making look up who the fuck Kate Gosselin was. I had been blessed with forgetting.

Couldn't we just let this morons fame-not-fame die it's natural death?

Wow...

1: You're thinking of Octomom, of which there is only one. Kate Gosselin just has a shitload of kids.

The girl on the left seems afraid, the one on the right seems to have some degree of contempt for mom. I don't think either is necessarily shy. I think mom is out for buck and they know it.

I don't think turning children into performers for a buck is fair. Kate is an asshole.

"Reality" TV - fucking useless.

@6, they're out for a buck, too. Guess where they learned it. These girls have a zero percent chance of turning out as anything other than total sharks like mom. What a piece of work.

That was the most amazing TV trainwreck I have seen in a long, long, long, looooooooong time. Wow.

I think the biggest sign that they were permanently affected by this mental abuse was that they agreed to come on national TV to talk about it.

I've said it before: Parents who allow their families to be part of reality TV shows should have their children taken away, a vasectomy/tubes tied, and be banned from adopting. It's child abuse.

And watching those shows is taking pleasure in child abuse.

Oh Fnarf, you cynic. There is, at least, a chance they'll define themselves as anti-Kates, which would make them decent people. They're thirteen. There's still hope. And plenty of time for therapy.

Looks more like it's Kate's idea than the girls'.

Gross.

@13. Nah. She said it right there: she wants to do another show. The girl, not the mother. She's hooked for life -- and she doesn't know what real people act like, only her hideous asshole parents. Therapy is a solution it will never occur to her to try.

I half expected one of them to start blinking out "torture" in morse code...

@17, LOL, Oh yes.

@16 -- someone has to entertain us with their bad decisions. These kids are adorable enough. Just stop imagining them as real people with real lives.

Unless you cried during the Truman show. If this is the case, carry on.

@20: I'd say they're equally negative. They provide the venue and the "story", these lizard people fall in line to act in the roles they've conditioned themselves to perform.

The most likely answer is that they didn't want to lie, but they knew there would be dire consequences from Mommy Dearest were they to tell the truth. Wait five years, they'll be out from under her wing and able to write their tell-all.

@20: It aired live. (And not putting it on the website after it aired would be stupid.)

Better and worse parents than Kate Gosselin have been embarasssed when their kids clam up at unexpected times.

I happen to live upstairs from some very famous musicians who many people who read The Stranger love. They were nice enough to invite our two kids (6 and 9) to record some background vocals for a song they were working on. Now, our kids LOVE singing. they sing all the time. But were quiet as mouses in the apartment studio. The guys were super nice, but alas, the kids didn't perform. They were nervous, there were strangers about etc. It happens.

I do find it relatively annoying that The Stranger staff/writers have no problem thinking that their so much better than Gosselin or anyone else who isn't going out of their way to fuck with your day.

I was disturbed by Kate's casual slam of her ex, the girls' father, in front of them on national television. She listed the sources of disinformation about their family and "their father" was one. No matter how fucked up the ex may be, it's not right for one parent to so casually put the other down in front of the children.