KATE GOSSELIN: HOW SHE FOOLED THE WORLD - THE RISE AND FALL OF A REALITY TV QUEEN (67 page)

Judy and the girls were on the arm bridge monkey bars, where you hang by your arms and pull yourself across. Judy did it first and Hannah and Alexis tried to follow. They weren’t strong enough to make it so they hung there until Judy could help them across. Not nearly as dramatic as when Joel got stuck. When Hannah got to the other side she yelled to Kate “Mommy, Mommy!!” and blew her a kiss. Kate blew two kisses right back to her.

Judy was swinging on the bars now showing Joel how to do it. He was trying his hardest and she yelled “Go Joel you can do it! You’re almost done!”

Now Kate was hiding from the boys at the bottom of the tunnel slide and when they came out the bottom she growled like a monster so loud that she could be heard I’m sure for a block. The boys loved it and were laughing hysterically and Kate kept doing it for them.

Kate was alone holding the little dog’s leash and she said to him while laughing, “You got a leaf on your face.”

Then another little girl came over with her mother and the girl was holding a branch and Kate said loudly “Oh my! I thought you were going to throw that stick at the dog. I almost died!”

Moving across the playground to where Alexis and Hannah were on a little Kiddie seesaw, Kate did a vertical jump up and landed in the middle of the two girls, balancing on the seesaw. She stood there for a few moments and jumped back down. Having watched Kate for six months, this was completely out of character for her. She genuinely looked like she was having the time of her life with her kids and it was so nice to see. Kate and Judy were laughing together and talking across the playground.

Next, all of the kids ran over to the ‘diaper swings,’ the ones with the built-in seat and the bar that comes down to hold you in. Kate said to them, “you guys are soooooo big. You used to fit in these with no problem. The kids wanted to swing in them so they jammed themselves in and Kate and Judy pushed them. When they were getting them out of the swings, Joel got stuck and it was so funny to see. Kate was holding him stretched out vertically while Judy was trying to untangle his feet from the swing. This went on for two minutes until Judy got him loose. Kate said to him, “say thank you Judy and mommy.”

Now for the excitement – A Wyomissing park worker came driving up in his park pickup truck and got out and was walking around picking up branches. When he got close to Kate and the kids he said hello and the kids were talking to him and then Kate joined in and they stood there talking for thirty minutes while the kids played. He was a big guy wearing a neon green shirt with the sleeves chopped off. Very rugged-looking. Kate was very engaged in the conversation and kept it going. Their body language was very flirtatious. Kate was smiling the whole time and was very talkative, kicking leaves around and rocking back and forth. They talked alone for fifteen minutes while the kids played nearby. At one point they both took out their cell phones and appeared to be entering the digits of the other. I was close enough to hear his name and there’s no doubt in my mind that this was a potential hookup. Several times he tried to say goodbye and get back to work and Kate kept chatting him up. I thought this was fantastic to see. After everything that she’s been dealing with and all the rumors, she very much deserves to meet a new man or at least flirt with a hot guy.

I know the area very well and will try to find him and check into what was said between them.

He was very good with the kids and was talking to them and playing around with them. When he said goodbye, the kids followed him to his truck and one of the boys yelled “By mister man in green!”

After he left, Kate yelled to Judy to “call her and find out her ETA.” No idea who they were talking about. Ten minutes later, they packed it up and held hands walking back up the leafy hill to the van where an attractive blonde woman was waiting with her daughter. They loaded up the kids as well as the new little girl and headed back to the Gosselin house for lunch. I heard Kate say to her kids, “wow, first you get donuts, then you go to the playground and now you get to have a friend come home for lunch and to play!”

They went back to the house and everyone went inside and stayed there unti 3:30 when it was time for Kate to go to the bus stop and pick up Mady and Cara.

It was a quick stop and the twins jumped in the back and Kate raced back home to finish the play date. The mom came to the house to pick up her daughter just before dark and everyone was inside for the night it looked like. Kate put the Sprinter van back in the garage and Judy left a little after 5 pm. Long day for her but she looked like she had as much fun as Kate did.

A few months later, while still digging for information, I made a new friend, strictly by coincidence. The friend turned out to be the ex-wife of the big, rugged guy that Kate was chatting up at the playground. The man’s name is extremely unique and the ex-wife told me the story first, never knowing what I had seen at the playground that day.

She said that her ex got reprimanded at his job with the Wyomissing Borough for bragging about having a sexual relationship with Kate Gosselin.

I would guess that the guy was making the story up to impress his friends but there certainly may have been a date or two with Kate. Who knows? The paps shut it down when it gets dark and I’ve never been able to catch Kate with another man, even though that was something I had hoped for while working for US. That would have been a big story.

“Nothing that you read on the Internet or in print is true

unless it is approved by us.”

– Kate Gosselin

The Gosselin story has been kicking around the blogosphere for several years now, with some distinct and separate camps of fanatics expressing their opinions – the Kate “haters” and the Kate supporters, or “sheeple.” There are also the bloggers who hate Kate, but don’t like to be called “haters.” It can be a bit confusing at times.

Many people on the blogs claim to be “insiders” or claim to have information that they put out there as fact. Others claim to have “expert opinions.” There’s even a local blogger from Wernersville who claims to be Kate’s “neighbor.” That’s a bit like saying that Mars is a neighbor of Earth.

Kate Gosselin doesn’t really have any neighbors, and she doesn’t live in Wernersville, PA. She lives in Lower Heidelberg Township, which is a rural area a couple of miles from the small, time-forgotten town of Wernersville. One day when I was bored, I measured the distance from Kate’s driveway to the “Welcome to Wernersville” sign. It is exactly 2.0 miles.

I live 10 miles from Kate’s house. I have lived in the area my entire life and I know it well. I drove to the Gosselin house every day for years, so I am also very familiar with the surrounding areas.

There is no question that Jon and Kate had neighbors in Wyomissing and Elizabethtown, PA. However, Kate now lives on a 23-acre property, surrounded by a fence and a few thousand acres of farmland. At the end of her driveway is a metal gate, which is about a football field away from her house. That’s as close as you’ll ever get to ringing her doorbell and dropping off a pie. Her “neighbor” across the street lives on 600 acres surrounded by cornfields. There’s no sign of any entrance to his property, but if you drive past Kate’s house, down the street a bit, and look very closely in the winter when the leaves are off the trees, you can see his huge house off in the distance. Kate’s “neighbors” are local farmers. The closest living person you may see if you’re driving to Kate’s house is the little old man and his big dog that live a quarter-mile down the road on the corner.

If you have ever seen tabloid photos of Kate and the kids trick-or-treating at Halloween, it sure as heck wasn’t in her “‘neighborhood” of Wernersville. You’d have a better chance of seeing the Loch Ness Monster than seeing Kate Gosselin knocking on the door of somebody in Wernersville. In the past, Kate would pack the kids up and drive them three-plus hours to Maryland to trick-or-treat in her bodyguard Steve Neild’s neighborhood. I know this because I followed her there while working for
US Weekly
.

As far as the bloggers go, the “haters” and the “sheeple” take things to extremes, but a case can be made for both sides. Both groups are basing their opinions on what they have seen on television and what they have heard coming from Kate’s mouth, or from her thumbs via Twitter. They each have fringe members who are prone to wild speculation and who can be unspeakably vile and cruel.

The “Kate lovers” have bought into the television image of Kate as the super-organized, controlling, no-nonsense supermom that was sold to them by Discovery/TLC. That’s understandable, I suppose. Lots of people believe what they see on television. Lots of people also believe in little green men. To each his or her own. Some of her fans are young; some are naive; some are simply ignorant. Some of the “sheeple” are probably much like Kate, and see no problem with her words and behavior. I suspect that a lot of Kate’s supporters also sympathize with her because they fell hook, line and sinker for the lies that she and Discovery crafted about Jon. The one indisputable fact about her most die-hard fans is that they ALWAYS give excuses and look to lay blame elsewhere for Kate’s obvious mistreatment of others, her bad behavior, her lies, and her ignorant and insensitive statements.

It will be interesting to see if any of Kate’s fans change their opinion of her after reading Kate’s own words and finding out how she really treats her children and dog, and how she makes fools of other
people via email. I wonder if they will feel betrayed when they find out how she really feels about her fans, and how fake Kate’s “reality” world really is.

The “haters” have taken what they have seen and heard from Kate on television and in interviews and have drawn completely opposite conclusions. They watched her ignore, ridicule and disrespect her children, her husband, and countless others, and saw that something was terribly wrong. They found her detachment from her kids disturbing. They were not blinded by celebrity or a well-crafted persona and, based on Kate’s own words and actions, came to understand that Kate is driven by greed and selfishness and an undying desire for fame. They have refused to excuse her blatant lies and are unrelenting in taking her to task.

Before I began writing this book, I had never read any of the blogs. I stuck mainly to the entertainment and tabloid websites to take the temperature of what was being reported about the Gosselins each day. My iPhone was a Godsend early on while I was staked out in front of the Gosselin home, and while I sat alone in my car waiting for something newsworthy to happen on Heffner Road. But once I committed to writing this book, I started reading the blogs from the beginning as part of my research, to see what people were saying and who, if any of them, really knew anything for certain.

There were four Gosselin blogs bookmarked on my computer that I read regularly during this period. By this time, I was privy to most of the details of what I was writing about, so I knew when somebody was posting comments just to give their opinion, or to speculate, or to see their words online, and I knew when somebody with factual knowledge of specific situations was posting. I knew when stories were planted on the blogs by the “players,” or by their girlfriends, friends, etc.

I did not, and do not, know everything about what was really going on between Jon and Kate. Only Jon and Kate and the kids know, and that’s the way it should always be. So, unless you were in that house, you just don’t know. And you never will. Unfortunately, both Jon and Kate have been caught in countless lies, making it very difficult for most people to believe anything they say.

I have read many emails between Kate, her manager Julie Carson May, and Discovery Communications, documenting how Kate would get bothered by something she saw online. She would immediately fire off an email to Discovery requesting that it be taken care of. “Can we sue??” was a question Kate was quick to ask.

Before there were fan sites and bloggers taking sides on the Gosselins, I saw firsthand the power that Kate, through Discovery, wielded. When my wife, Dana, made unflattering comments about Kate on her blog for the
Reading Eagle
, Kate and Discovery had the blog shut down. I worked at the
Reading Eagle
at that time, and I was in the office when the call came in. With one phone call, Kate and company had the world’s oldest family-owned newspaper cowering in the corner like a scared child. Dana’s blog was shut down within the hour because the people on the newspaper’s management team were afraid.

Kate monitored Google News alerts and scoured the Internet and the blogosphere for anyone speaking negatively about her. She kept files on her computer that were filled with material from blogs and tabloids. It consumed her. When ratings were huge, Kate had people to monitor the Internet for her. Once she hit the downside of her reality life, she again became totally consumed with personally scouring the Internet day and night for any mention of her.

Along with keeping tabs on various people and websites, Kate kept a close watch on the “Gwoppers” at
gosselinswithoutpity.blogspot.com
. She had a file on her computer with information from that blog, including who the moderators were.

Back in 2005, Kate kept one particular file folder on her computer titled “BAD BLOG.” When I looked inside the folder, there was my wife Dana’s blog, in all its glory, along with a Word document that contained a single comment from a poster to the blog.