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

by Robert Hoffman

  TWEET TWEET

  Join us&ignore the lies of haters.Have a ?, get answers from me!;)

  –Kate Gosselin

  Kate has been tweeting like a maniac ever since the tabloid industry finally decided she was no longer newsworthy, and the lone paparazzo no longer waited breathlessly outside her front gate to follow her and take her picture on a daily basis. I say paparazzo (singular) because the paparazzi (plural) had long since vanished. They were only there for a few months during the summer of 2009. After that, except on a few occasions, it was just the lone pap – Kate’s very own personal stalker – giving the illusion to Kate’s few remaining fans that she was still being followed and photographed. She did nothing, of course, to dispel the rumors that the paps had gone. She still spoke about how much she was being followed and how much she hated the paparazzi, even when they were no longer interested in her.

  Kate dreaded the day when she would leave her property along her quiet country road … alone. No paparazzo. Desperation mode had set in, and Kate realized that the media frenzy was over and she would soon be all alone with her eight children. And how was she going to spread her lies now that the interview circuit had all but closed its doors on her?

  Anyone who knows Kate knows that she despises regular people. She mocks and belittles and talks down to and makes fun of everyone, including her children. She has nobody left in her life that isn’t paid to be there or who doesn’t fulfill her narcissistic needs. Go back and re-read “The World According to Kate” if you need a reminder about how Kate feels about people. This includes her fans and those who tweet her incessantly.

  So the thought of Kate Gosselin lowering herself to share her inner-most thoughts and feelings with complete strangers via Twitter is absolutely bizarre. But she’s doing it. Why?

  One reason is that Kate needs constant attention and adoration. She is a textbook narcissist, and the thought of being alone without anyone telling her how wonderful she is on a daily basis is frightening to her. Kate had gotten so used to having people treat her like a celebrity that she didn’t know how to act when that was taken away from her by TLC canceling her show. So she took to Twitter to tell her followers how wonderful she is and they, in turn, tell her back how wonderful she is. Log on to Kate’s Twitter sometime and listen to the narcissistic love fest.

  Another reason Kate put all her energy into tweeting about herself, possibly more than any other “celebrity” in the history of Twitter, is because she read online about celebrities like Kim Kardashian making money by tweeting to their large followings. Kate thought this would be an easy way to make money while sitting at home doing nothing. She also read online that her ex-husband, Jon, was also pocketing some easy money doing the same, but on a much, much smaller scale than Kate.

  So not to be outdone, Kate set out to conquer the Twitter universe. She envisioned herself easily collecting several million followers, like Kim Kardashian. You see, in Kate’s mind, she’s a much bigger celebrity than Kim, and if Kim can do it, so can Kate, times 8.

  The beauty of Twitter for Kate is that she is free to say anything, whether it is true or not. She expected that since the lone, lazy paparazzo had gone long ago, or stopped by only rarely, nobody would be around to call bullshit on her lying tweets. Well, almost nobody.

  I included this chapter about Kate’s addiction to Twitter because it provides some perspective about her thought processes and behavior. Her tweets provide a fascinating look into how she continues to exploit her children and disregard their safety by broadcasting their words, activities and photos to strangers; how she uses her fans to satisfy her craving for attention and adulation; how she tells tales to make herself look special or to gain sympathy; how she successfully gets people and companies to send her free things; and how she uses Twitter as a platform in her never-ending campaign to smear the father of her children.

  In this chapter, as in those previous, I have removed the Twitter names of those tweeting with Kate in an effort to protect the “haters,” the ignorant, and those blinded by the pinpoint of light reflecting off a has-been reality “star.” I would also rather not give any of her rabid, hate-filled, or creepy fans who clamor for her time and attention and information about her kids the satisfaction of seeing their names in print. Welcome to Kate’s life on Twitter. Her tweets appear in bold type.

  THE BUS STOP LIE

  Early on, when Kate first started tweeting, the Kate-hate blogs were abuzz with questions about whether Kate was actually doing the tweeting herself. It was a legitimate question considering that Kate has someone to do everything else for her. Why would she actually do the tweeting herself?

  I was a bit curious myself, having followed her on her daily travels for so long, so I checked in on Kate every now and then to see what she was tweeting. I wasn’t buying that someone was doing her tweeting for her, but I was suspicious about whether she was actually doing the things she said she was doing in her tweets.

  On a day when Kate was tweeting about going to pick up the kids at the bus stop, I hopped in my car and made the 5-minute trip there myself – on a hunch. I sat in my car, staring at the big blue bus at the school bus stop, reading on my iPhone Kate’s constant tweeting in real time about her being there – at the bus stop – anxiously waiting for the bus to arrive and return her beautiful babies to her. But my mind was blown, because sitting in the big blue bus, at the bus stop, just a few feet away from me was, not Kate Gosselin, but a college-age babysitter. I kept watching, expecting to see Kate jump out of the back of the van to meet her babies and run to them with open arms. Surely Kate wouldn’t lie about a thing like that, would she? And why?

  Alas, the young babysitter rounded up the kids, loaded them into the van and drove them home, without Kate Gosselin anywhere near. To be fair, I have seen Kate picking the kids up at the same bus stop many, many times. I’m not sure why she felt the need to lie about it that day. Personally, I don’t believe anything anyone says to me or tweets anyway, and I know that television and the entertainment industry in general is all a fabricated illusion.

  It must somehow make Kate happy to spend all day tweeting lies to complete strangers. But a grown woman with eight small children in her house while she’s tweeting non-stop, day in and day out, has a problem. Every second she spends staring at her computer or tweeting on her smart phone while her children are at home is a second she could have spent with them. And she chooses not to.

  KATE’S HARROWING EXPERIENCE

  We had our one and only snowstorm of 2011 just before Halloween. To everyone else in Berks County, it was just another snowstorm. But to Kate Gosselin, it was a harrowing experience that she barely survived.

  When Kate described the scene at her house to her Twitter followers, she made it sound like she and the kids were snowed in like Jack Nicholson and the Torrence family in the movie The Shining. It made for great drama to buy into if you were at home in another state.

  Except that I was at my house, 10 minutes away from Kate’s house, reading her tweets and looking out my front window, and wondering just what the heck she could have been drinking at the time to be tweeting such nonsense. Everyone believed her tweets, though, because there was no reason not to.

  It was an early snowstorm, with wet snow, so it stuck to tree branches and knocked down the weaker branches from the trees. It was nothing special for this part of the country. But to Kate Gosselin? Well, that’s quite a different story, as always. Kate’s situation is always unique, and always harder and more important than yours or mine. She always has it worse than everyone else.

  I drove to Kate’s house three times during her “harrowing experience” to document what was actually going on during the day and night. I took many photographs of the roads leading to Kate’s house, of Kate’s plowed driveway, and of Kate’s completely plowed at all times roads, not only in front of her house, but all the way into town and to the highways.

  The TOTAL accumulation of snow on Kate Gosselin’s property was 5
.5 INCHES. Just under the 6 inches that was forecast for her area. I photographed myself standing in the snow in her front yard (on the other side of her fence, of course), and I photographed a measuring stick next to my boots in her front yard. I did this twice – at the height of the snow and her tweeting, and at 7 AM the next morning after the snow had stopped.

  At 3 pm on Saturday, there were just under 1.5 inches of snow on Kate’s property. But here’s how Kate described the mild snowstorm on Twitter during that time:

  Um instead of painting pumpkins today, we are shoveling our 6 inches of snow.. And counting. Not cool

  And did I mention we lost power? Cold lunch and uh cereal for dinner?

  Kate must have forgotten that she has a huge grill under her covered back porch right outside her basement doors, protected from the snowfall, that she could have used for cooking. But her situation started getting more desperate:

  I’ve lost most of my driveway trees to the heavy snow. We are stuck bc of branches. 8+ inches of snow now.

  Did you hear that? She said “8+ inches of snow” had fallen. At 4:00 in the afternoon. She said she lost most of her driveway trees. Neither was true.

  Here’s the truth of the matter. There was actually about 2.5 to 3 inches of snow, maybe, around that time in the late afternoon. I was there at her house by then, and Kate’s driveway had already been plowed by her snow-removal company; a few very small branches were pushed off to the side all along the driveway. This was in stark contrast to the many, many houses I passed on the way to Kate’s that actually had sustained significant tree damage and whose homeowners were outside cleaning up the mess.

  Kate said, “I’ve lost most of my driveway trees to the heavy snow.”

  She, in fact, lost only one tree, up close to her front door. It split in half. The other 30 trees were in perfect condition, until the following week when she had them pruned way back to prevent any future snow damage like what had happened to the single damaged tree. “Most of my driveway trees” was one tree out of 30. A big fat lie.

  Just then, one of Kate’s favorite tweeties threw a monkey-wrench into Kate’s plans to create this incredible drama around herself. She asked to see a picture of the damage.

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 Yes take pic, im trying 2 visualize all the damage done to the trees!

  For those unfamiliar with Kate Gosselin, you should know that she takes, and posts to Twitter, pictures of anything and everything under the sun. Posting a picture of the damaged trees would have been a simple, no-brainerish thing for Kate to do, if she had wanted to. But a picture would have proven that Kate was lying. So…Kate waited a little while and then tweeted this excuse:

  I cant it’s too upsetting. Trunks left along driveway. Branches everywhere… I am so upset

  She said there were trunks and branches EVERYWHERE! But she was too upset to take a picture? I took some pictures. Besides the one tree right up by her front door, the rest were fine. They had some thin, weak little branches neatly pruned off by the heavy snow, but otherwise, all were in good shape.

  A tweetie threw another common sense question at Kate, the self-proclaimed “most organized person on the planet” who never hesitates to give the rest of the world advice on how to run a household:

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 You do have a generator don’t ya?

  no :(

  Kate lives in a giant house out in the country, with eight kids inside, with multiple refrigerators and freezers filled with food, and she doesn’t have a backup generator? I live almost in the city and I have a backup everything. Just in case.

  Kate tweeted more updates:

  Driveway is now plowed, branches pushed2the side&still no power/heat.Cereal &fruit salad 4 dinner.Kids ea have flashlight/playing in dark!

  The house was completely dark, so I’ll say Kate was being honest about the power being out.

  I’m literally sick abt my tree loss. Too expensive2replace trees&they were my favorite part of property!;( Worried abt cold temps overnight

  Did she make that comment about her trees being too expensive to replace in order to get people to send money, or just to get sympathy because things are so incredibly difficult and sad for Kate? Who knows? Her track record of lying and embellishing and scheming and taking advantage of people is the justification for this question.

  Kate finally posted a picture of the one seriously damaged tree to prove that she had lost “most” of her driveway trees. It was not surprising that she was this stupid. If the lazy paparazzo had been interested, he could have easily driven an hour to take the same photos I did to prove her wrong.

  A tweetie, no doubt trying to lift Kate’s spirits, tweeted that things could be a lot worse; that at least “you are all together! :)” Kate responded in her usual upbeat, can-do way:

  I know but feel helpless

  This was at 7 pm. I drove home and went back out again, just to see what was going on around town. This was a normal snowy Saturday night in Berks County. The roads were plowed and fine. All of the restaurants near Kate’s house and her Target shopping center were open and bustling with crowds.

  If Kate truly felt helpless, and was worried about her children being cold, or eating cold food, she could have SIMPLY driven her very large SUV down her plowed driveway, through her open front gate, and down her completely plowed road to any one of the many hotels in the area, including the Homewood Suites, where Kate used to stay when Jon would come to the house for his custody time. It was the same hotel where Tony and the Dancing With The Stars crew stayed, and it’s a stone’s throw from about 12 restaurants, one of which, The Texas Roadhouse, is in the same parking lot.

  At the very same time of night that Kate was describing her harrowing experience being “snowed in,” my wife and kids were hosting a Halloween party at our house – 10 minutes from Kate’s house on Heffner Road – with many of the kids’ friends and parents there having a great time, so life was going on as usual. People were out and about.

  This tweetie tried to make the clearly distraught and traumatized Kate feel better:

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 aww so sorry Kate, I know your disappointed, but it’s the material things u can replace LATER. As long as ur fam isn’t hurt.

  I know that well but the trees gives usprivacy :)

  Kate also tweeted about what was really important:

  U hav NO idea what Id do4a HOT coffee! I’m freezing2the core(I’m always cold even in summer)!

  Kate could have used her cell phone (you know, that device that is permanently attached to her hand) to call one of the 20 restaurants within 10 minutes of her house to order takeout. The roads were clear. And yes, she could have had coffee delivered, too.

  Kate made sure to keep her tweeties apprised of everything her kids were up to during the storm:

  Kids were playing haunted house in basement.Now playing a flashlight game ie lights click on as quick as poss aft Mady names what 2shine on

  Thank God the twins were there to take care of and entertain the sextuplets while Kate complained and tweeted to strangers the entire time. One of her tweeties gave her some good information:

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 “I just bought a portable batt pack, u charge it + can plug stuff ie: coffee maker,lamp,ph chargers if pwr

  And to that, Kate Gosselin, “the most organized person on the planet,” said:

  really? Were do I get such a miraculous invention?

  Ummm, how about Target, Dick’s Sporting Goods or any other nearby store?

  And now here is another of the many, many lies she told during this ordeal. It’s hilarious how even her Twitter followers, most of whom are teenage girls, can figure out what to do, but Kate can’t.

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 use your grill to cook. Don’t you have a fireplace? Go to Wally world & get a couple heaters. Close off all rooms but one.

  roads not plowed. Can’t go anywhere

  And I repeat: The roads were perfectly clear and safe to drive on, even with kids in the SUV or BBB.

  xxxxx @Kate
plusmy8 awfully quiet Kate how u holding up?

  lack of caffeine is making me sluggish. Kids still going strong. Humming twinkle twinkle in stereo w flash light clicks 4 beat

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 theres always starbucks ! Our Target has one in the entrance ! :-)

  snowed in

  Going2charge my phone in car now…B back later..Don’t panic! We r fine :) (as fine as we can b w/o lights,heat,hot food&coffee that is lol)

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 How much snow did you guys get?

  10-12 inches

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 -almost lost our trees and bushes 2,I went out several times during storms with baseball, knocking off snow!

  I shook branches too… Couldn’t get to them fast enough. Branches broke on treed next to me as I furiously worked

  Does anyone reading that tweet truly believe that Kate Gosselin went out in the snow and “furiously worked” shaking tree branches? Kate stole that idea from her tweetie, as she so often does. The only thing Kate “furiously worked” at during her snowstorm ordeal was tweeting:

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 Oh, okay, the older trees…all of them? From the weight of the snow?We had snowstorms twice last spring-

  yes, lost at least half of each tree and one is now just a trunk :(

  xxxxx @Kateplusmy8 Hopefully there’s some insurance coverage that can help with (tree) replacement. You haven’t had them that long, have you?