They do! And this is actually enjoyable, so bear with me, here. I mean, this does come from the same progressive parent Ayelet Waldman, who wrote her book about what it's like to be a mom that came out in May. Which the Times does mention. I wish they would've quoted from The Hamilton Review of Books, however:

...Look, she likes to fuck her husband, Michael Chabon, a lot, and playing with her kids she thinks is okay and everything, but not really in the same league as fucking her husband, Michael Chabon, and if she feels that way, that's her right. She likes to fuck Michael Chabon, period, deal with it.

And her husband wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. So! These parents, they have these children. And a bunch of people do terrible things to their children like maybe put them in balloons or put them on TV or put them in beauty pageants or, I don't know, make them part of an outer-borough trend New York Magazine ends up having to document for a five page facepalm-heavy read. No, this is not that. These people write books about their children. And not just books, people. Michael Chabon books. Let's be honest: you have fucked up parents. They're either going to put you on a reality show or write a Michael Chabon book about you. What do you want? You want the book. Especially if it's Chabon. Phillip Roth, not so much. Part of me thinks this Times article was written explicitly to make half of grown-ass-man Brooklyn jealous of Chabon's children. Michael Chabon wrote books about them. And not you. Not only that, but he fact-checked with them, too. Neal Pollack, stick this up your AlternaAss:

When they do write about their children, Mr. Chabon and Ms. Waldman check with them first. If the topic might be sensitive, they read the child sections aloud and ask for their permission to publish. (In the Times Book Review published Sunday, David Kamp writes that Mr. Chabon "shows admirable restraint in not pimping out his children, in not giving away too much of their lives, their trials and their cute utterances.")

Boom. Michael Chabon does more fact-checking and on-the-record, off-the-record designating with his kids than the Washington Post does with their lobbyists. And after all of this effort, after having this Pulitzer-winning dad who's brilliant and incredible and god, he's writing a book about you! What do you give him for it?

And for their part, their children have not been particularly interested in what their parents spend their days writing.

SPOILED CHILDREN! And I wonder why they didn't like it? Hm. Anyway: Michael and Ayelet are still crazy in love with each other. They go on "plot walks," which is kind of like when I go have a smoke except I do it alone when I can't come up with a new way to write about Lady Gaga's genitals and they do it together and make brilliant Pulitzer magic their kids won't appreciate for how brilliant it really is. They do it together a lot. They do everything together a lot. They have such loving parents. Why won't these kids like these books??!?!?

The couple's eldest daughter, Sophie, has read a few of her mother's murder mysteries. "She did not enjoy the experience," Mr. Chabon said of his daughter's read. "She just wasn't ready to think of me as having ever been young or smoking cigarettes." Ms. Waldman jumped in: "Or being sexually active, sleeping with men."

Ah. That's why. Embarrassing parents are universal. Also, Ayelet Waldman still likes to fuck her husband a lot, really, is the point.

[Note: I have been informed by two readers (thank you Baroness and Sunroar) that the final quote reads strangely (as it does in the Times). Apparently, Chabon actually did sleep with men, and he discusses it in an essay about The Mysteries of Pittsburgh that now appears at the end of the paperback. That said, Waldman could've easily been talking about herself, and she still likes fucking Michael Chabon. Also, all parents are still embarrassing. Don't ever try to be a 'cool' parent. Ever. You will fail.]

• Kate and Jon Gosselin, congratulations, you've made it back to the top of the Gossip Roundup, to the umbrage of what will be many pissed off and tired commenters and your kids! They hate you! I do, too. So: it appears the one with the dead thing atop their head is seeking moneys for being the breeder of the small ones from the one with the face of ass and the terribly gauche shirts (yeah man, your shirts are gauche compared to that last sentence). Not only does she want moneys to supposedly feed their once valuable moneymaking products of breeding, but she also wants moneys for being alive: alimony. Kate Gosselin. Wants alimony. From Jon Gosselin. I'm not sure how this works as their main source of income was the show, but maybe she's seeking some of the money Jon Gosselin got from appearing at a pool party in Vegas? Which was sometime before, oh ha ha! her yukking it up on Leno! I mean, face it: he probably spent that already, but do you really want to know on what? Also, does she really care? The sad thing is that these people are someone else's parents—eight cute little peoples!—and I don't feel bad calling them both complete whatevers (technical term) because they won't go away and, you know, actually do something. This isn't like other cases of tabloid journalism where celebrities who have kids make headlines: these people make money from being overexposed, how can they protect their kids from it while they're taking all this attention? They can't. They suck. [NYDN]
  
  
• Fine. I'll bite. How much do they suck?

  "She barely talks to them," a Kate confidant told the magazine. "The nannies are doing 95% of the work. Kate has a short attention span, and everything upsets her." A Jon source said, "He can't stay at home with them. He gets annoyed when they interrupt him when he's on the phone."

  That much. [NYDN]
  
  

• Michael Jackson's awesome episode of The Simpsons, where he sings Happy Birthday to Lisa with Bart as a 400-pound mental patient was just as bizarre in real life. Apparently, Jackson serviced the crew of The Simpsons (not like that) with Sikhs in white robes and turbans while they studied the script and recorded parts at his house. When you freak out Hank Azaria, you know you've really gone far. [Page Six]
  
  
• Lay off A-Rod's girlfriend Kate Hudson! mean wives and girlfriends of Yankee players! Especially now that they're in the post-season. Honestly, Minka Kelly (aka Lyla Garrity of Friday Night Lights fame) is Jeeetah's girlfriend and is ridiculously cute so really, most of the trouble has to be coming from her. Other teams' local newspapers and fans embedded in tabloid journalism: play this story up as much as possible if you want to mess with the Yankees post-season chances. You know the drill. [Page Six]
  
  
• Pierce Brosnan likes Mojitos. Don't ask. [Page Six]
  
  
• Carey Mulligan went from who? to OMG isn't she the best? in like, five minutes. So the Daily News took the time to catch you up: she's pretty, she's in an overrated movie that New York critics are slapping around, she's a "Sundance Darling" that's coming to eat Natalie Portman's brain. This has only just begun. [NYDN]
  
  
• Amy Crackhouse spent $14M partying in St. Lucia. Can you even spend $14M legally in St. Lucia? No, no, no. Time for a mediocre third album to pay the bills, toots. [NYDN]
  
  
• Dr. Phil denies that he groped the breasts of a "patient" and held her captive against her will. I'm not sure how far his credibility goes here because whenever he speaks on the teevee I feel like my soul is being held against its will, but all I have to do is change the channel. So: there's that. Am I suggested that he did? No! But he is an asshole. [NYDN]
  
  
• Khloe Kardashian, who's worse for the Lakers than Isaiah Rider Jr., is in the early stages of a pre-nup (yeeeeah) with Lamar Odom and also, in the early stages of completely screwing the Lakers out of back-to-back championships. Show your support, I guess? [NYDN]
  
  
• Marge Simpson is getting naked for Playboy. Just another day in the office, folks. What Hefner and Co. don't know or forgot is that there's an entire slice of the internet devoted to this kind of pervy thing, but who're we to judge? Cartoons, strip it off. You were a marginal last frontier, anyway. [NYDN]
  
  
• If you wanna end up like Gene Simmons, don't do drugs and have lots of sex, says Gene Simmons. So: who's got the glue bag? [Page Six]
  
  
• Aw. Adam Duritz and Emmy Rossum were photographed together at Lincoln Center, and the Daily News suggests that they're together. Rossum had a tough divorce and she's a legitimately talented young actress! This is nice. Also: November 1st is the ten year anniversary of the Counting Crows most underrated album, This Desert Life. You did not know that, did you? It was good. [NYDN]
  
  
• Usher's delaying his divorce as much as he possibly can by not signing papers. Let it burn, Ush. [NYDN]
  
  
• Katy Perry's dating Russel Brand. Take a crack at guessing the headline. The winner gets the satisfaction at knowing that they're five steps ahead of the Daily News' gossip pages (or what they think of their audience). Whee! Also, even I was in pain after watching him diddle Kristen Bell in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Am I alone here? Ew. [NYDN]

[Image via Disciullo/Bauer-Griffin]

America is inexplicably fascinated with these child-rearing maniacs—a brood of kids, an unhappy marriage, what could be better to watch? I can think of literally thousands of things, but that's not the point. The point is that these people's "dramatic" lives make Americans buy gossip magazines, meaning that an entire bloodsucking industry (ours, more or less) now depends on these two purely random walking warnings against fertility drugs. The possible outcomes of tonight's show, ranked from least appealing for gossip mags to most appealing:

1. Divorce—it would be a big story for a week, at most, then die out. These people would gradually be forgotten and maybe their kids could grow up in peace. That doesn't move magazines.

2. They made up! They're staying together!—This would be good for a few weeks of crap—the original stories, then the follow ups on "How they did it," etc., and updates on how it's going for as many weeks or months as the public's interest would bear. Which wouldn't be all that many because, let's face it, happiness doesn't sell. (This was the winning guess in our poll last week, btw).

3. Separation, followed by endless rounds of reconciliation, spats, and counseling—This is the gold mine. It's an entire season's worth of marital drama all by itself. It drags everything out. It offers no easy resolution, just more arguments and paid. Which are television gold! This is what Bonnie Fuller thinks will happen, and she is an expert on momentary celebrity and its discontents.

So you all watch tonight and see what happens and talk to Richard, not me, about it, please lord.

• CODE BLUE. REPEAT: CODE BLUE. The only character anyone in the entire Jon and Kate Gosselin saga anybody should care about - Aaden, The Bespectacled One - has been injured. Jon was seen taking him to a medical clinic by the paparazzi who've staked him out. Aaden had some kind of cut on his forehead, and while we're wont to speculate on the barfight which caused Aaden's head injury, we'll be sitting this one out on the sidelines during this sensitive period of healing. Anyway, whenever I cut myself, my Dad would always be like, WTF were you doing smashing a Jolt can on your head? And then he'd laugh and maybe hand me a band-aid and we'd get ice cream or something. So, anyway, Happy Father's Day. [Celebrity Gossip via E!]
  
  
• Aw. David Duchovny and Tea Leoni are sticking it out. Duchovny, if you remember, went to rehab for sex addiction - And really, how much sex do you need to be having or need to want to be having to go to rehab for sex addiction? It sounds like a silly question, but consider the logistics, here. - and Leoni and him "separated." Now, they're having this real life Californication-esque relationship of rebuilding. Dysfunctional Celebrities: they're just like us! Kinda? [People]
  
  
• Madonna's new kid, Mercy James, the one she stole from Africa, is back. It's a cute kid and all, but didn't she steal it from Africa? [P*r*z H*lt*n]
  
  
• Kanyeezey is back with his ex-girlfriend Amber Rose. Dude needs someone to hold him down. Seriously. You know when you tell your friends, maybe you need a girlfriend/boyfriend, or someone tells you, maybe you need a girlfriend/boyfriend, etc, and they mean it? I would sincerely tell Kanye West to stay in a committed relationship. I'm not sure why. [The Sun]
  
  
• So: two Keystone Cops tried to extort SJP and Matthew Broderick over pictures of their kid. A cop in Ohio went to the home of SJP's surrogate mother in Martins Ferry, waltzed in, stole some pictures, tried to steal some voicemails, walked right on out. They tried to sell the photos to a tabloid and got busted. The tabloid was allegedly the National Enquirer, but now we learn, isn't. The best part, though: the tabloid, TMZ now hears, are the ones to turn them in. But what if it's TMZ?! Don't you love how there's no such thing as a conflict of interest in tabloid journalism? [TMZ]
  
  
• Billy Joel and Katie Lee Joel are getting divorced because "William" - 60 years-old - wanted to start a family now, and Kathy wanted to focus on her career, according to a friend of Billy's. Kathy Lee's friends see it the other way around - what? - and this weird he-said she-said is Rush & Malloy's lead item the week after breaking the whole Roger Friedman's Suing Scientology story, and they don't even make an "Only The Good Die Young" joke. Weak. [R & M]
  
  
• Not really gossip, per se, but Daniel Radcliffe has openly suggested that the Harry Potter films be scored by Radiohead, which is *magical*. I definitely see Goblet of Fire as a very Bends-esqu experience while Prisoner of Azkaban might be slightly more In Rainbows. Am I right, or am I right? I could play this game for hours. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Nip Tuck is over, and the finale's probably going to suck, because Ryan Murphy and friends all went to Fox to go do Glee. Also, because they simply couldn't do anything else with the story. [LA Times]
  
  
• Hayden Christensen's family likes Rachel Bilson. What isn't there to like? But Hayden Christensen? If I brought him home, my family would be like YOU RUINED STAR WARS and also Foster why are you dating Hayden Christensen? If I brought Rachel Bilson home, they'd probably be like, meh, but that's just how they are. [Page Six]
  
  
• George Stephanopoulos was named Father of the Year by the National Father's Day Committee, which is funny, because he did a radio broadcast recently and his daughter was all like "I HATE YOU" Stephanopoulos addressed the recent Daddy Misconduct Charges against him by his daughter by noting that he and his wife had donated some of their kids' clothing, and that it was "all about some duckies." [Page Six]
  
  
• British club-owner Clive Kelly talked some smack on Sting for, I don't know, making him go broke or something? I guess this is the other R & M item. It involves Sting going to the rainforest and, you know, whatever, being Sting. [R & M]
  
  
• An E! blog put together a list of petitions written by fans of Robert Pattinson. Some of his fans are absolutely insane. Like, these people are strange and scary and he's not even a real vampire. But seriously - Robert Pattinson? [E!]
  
  
• Susan Boyle canceled another show last night over fears of exhaustion. That's three in a row, for anyone who's counting. Related, Simon Cowell's confession of Susan Boyle culpability in a paper yesterday. Is it time we just give up on this? Serious question. [Daily Express]

Oh, shit. Jon and Kate Gosselin might be lawyering up; Jon gave People an interview from a lawyer's office. This sucks. [Page Six]

• Pregnant R & B singer Kelis managed to Twitter - over a series of five or six Tweets - something about someone being a cheater, and cheaters cheating on people who don't deserve to be cheated on. She's probably talking about Nas, who she's getting divorced from soon. Meanwhile, a few Tweets later, she gives us the following film review of "The Hangover," out this weekend: "P.s there was a cute asian man in the movie. Very rare sighting so had to say it :)" In other news, Hipster Runoff is teaching celebrity blogging courses, somewhere. [P*r*z H*lt*n and Kelis' Twitter]

  
  

• Jim Carrey's in some kind of freaky New Age Eastern Think group. Go, Hollywood? This is kind of 1999ish. [Hollywood Reporter]

  
  

• Evan Dando's about to fuck. Some shit. Up. Except not. The Lemonheads' lead singer is suing GM for using "It's a Shame About Ray" in a bunch of their commercials without licensing it. As TMZ - who, really, is getting great at covering the legal affairs beat - explains, GM's broke-phi-broke, and Dando's lawsuit is kind of frivilous in that regard. Oh well. [TMZ]

  
  

• More of TMZ educating their readership, this time, about California legislative power, by demonstrating how Cali's anti-SLAPP statues are helping Kobe Bryant's maid talk to the press about her lawsuit against the Bryants. Next up: when you should and should not engage in jury tampering. [TMZ]

  
  

• Julia Roberts is in town filming Eat, Pray, Love and she's renting a place at 1 Morton Square in the West-West Village. I'd drop off a basket, say hi, maybe try to get her or Danny Moder to do a guest blog post, but that shit's so far west you need a visa to get there, so forget that. [Page Six]

  
  

• Phil Spector's 28 year-old girlfriend - only three years older than his daughter, it's helpfully pointed out - says that this guy is a sex-crazed fiend, or at least that they did it all the time. [Page Six]

  
  

• Marilyn Manson shaved a swastika into his new porn star girlfriend's ladyparts, and he used a protractor to do it. This sounds like something you do when you're 23 and going through your fifth year in college and the only girl you can bring home for the holidays is this batshit insane freshman goth, and your parents are talking about Republican politics at the dinner table, and you're like, OH YEAH? WELL THERE'S A SWASTIKA IN HER VAG AND I PUT IT THERE, SO THERE! and even the girl is thoroughly embarrassed and dumps you when you get back to school. You should probably graduate and get through that rebellious phase, you know? It's about time. Also, stop pretending to like The Smiths. [Kinda NSFW at Drunken Stepfather]

  
  

• Blake Liveley and Penn Badgley were among the people who the W Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale paid to show up at the opening of their place. Penn's rocking a beard and I kind of dig it, if only because it's very "fuck you" to the teenage-celebrity-industrial-complex. Rebellion! Meanwhile, Ft. Lauderdale's entirely geriatric population is psyched to hit the bumpin' lounge at the Dub. [PopSugar]

  
  

• Ron Weasley's main squeeze, Hermione, is magical in real life: she's doing all these fashion-forward things and the like. How can you not like Emma Watson? Seriously. She probably knows that if the real-life version of Hermione were a drunk moron, it'd be really sad. So she's either saving it until the movies are done, or she's an actual, responsible, image-conscious person in the best way. Which is, come to think of it, entirely possible. [Daily News]

  
  

• Kevin Bacon is a responsible person when he flies the LA to NYC flight. He's nice, courteous, and folds his blankets. And here's where I explain that it's nice to not write something salacious or stupid about this, or him. [TMZ]

  
  

• Bury-The-Lede Obama Bonus! The Obama women visited the Eiffel Tower yesterday while Dad was in Germany on business. It's their first trip abroad, ever since they've been in the White House. U Can Haz Jelusy. [NYDN]

Andy Borowitz helped us step into Dimension X when he wrote (a satirical piece; update below) earlier this week about a University of Minnesota School of Journalism conference, in which some serious self-doubt commenced over whether or not media organizations have managing covering the Jon and Kate saga proficiently:

"You open the New York Times, and what do you see?" said Davis Logsdon, Dean of Minnesota's journalism school. "Kim Jong-Il, Sonia Sotomayor — but not a word about Jon and Kate."

Mr. Logsdon said that if the media continued to ignore important stories like Jon and Kate, "they will continue their slide into irrelevance."

His umbrella positioning and bizarre ass-backwards logic about why the media's becoming irrelevant aside, he's right: there are important issues to cover regarding this thing. Child labor laws - which the show is currently being investigated over - childrens' mental health care issues, the distinction of labor laws as they pertain to "reality" television programming, maybe even something on what it's like to insure eight kids, and how insurance companies view the parents and surrounding factors as variables and liabilities. Another one of the panel's attendees was thinking of something slightly different:

Tracy Klugian, who heads the Center for Reality Show Media Studies, said that the media are leaving major questions unanswered: "Is Jon really having a fling with the 23-year-old schoolteacher? And what about Kate and the bodyguard? The American people look to the media to investigate these issues, and the fact that they haven't done their job is a scandal."

Or, in other words: if we don't get on this Jon and Kate thing now, journalism's fucked!

Now, yes, this is just some assclown in a room saying assclownish things. But there're a few pretty frightening elements about this, chief among them being that (1) they're telling budding writers to pen Jon and Kate stories under the pretenses that the people need to know those things, which is ridiculous - if the New York Times should write about Jon and Kate, at the most craven level, it's because of the SEO traffic; and (2) this is an actual journalism school, teaching actual students how to go about working as actual, real (!) journalists. Everyone's getting hosed, whether it's the Nu Class themselves or the readers of whatever papers these kids get farmed out to.

Meanwhile, people other than supermarket tabloids (and us) are actually starting to write about Jon and Kate. The aforementioned story about the show being investigated for labor law violations is a start in the right direction, and the New York Post recently made some decent - if not, tabloid-flavored - attempts at putting together a coherent picture of the perks said "reality" stars are getting as well as devoting a recent wide-eyed 2,100 words to documenting the phenomenon (that manages to get the headline wrong and heartily begin with an H.L. Mencken quote).

Elsewhere, however: the New York Times' Gail Collins thinks the TV show is a bad idea, wow, the HuffPo has conspiracy theories, and Michael Wolff is off doing other batshit things, like comparing Jon and Kate Gosselin to Sonia Sotomayor, which I can't even begin to explain.

Insert any ideals about journalism you might have here: there's a story to be had, a real scoop, something that the public wants to know about Jon and Kate that we haven't been given yet. Maybe something that isn't a cross-section of an actual news organization and TMZ. Maybe that's why the Jon and Kate story really is important to the media: it's one giant test being taken in real time, that's going to dictate what's news and what isn't when it comes to the realm of celebrity. And people want the news, right?

Maybe. In the mean time, here's Jon shopping at Barney's. Here's the family on vacation. Here's a body-language expert talking about how sad Kate is. And here's the story about the show not going anywhere, anytime soon.

That's not the worst part: while the lifestyle, Kate's hair, and Jon's "job" might be fake, the kids are still real. And it will continue to look this ugly from every. Single. Angle for as long as this goes on.

Media Faulted for Lack of "Jon and Kate" Coverage [HuffPo]

Update: Commenters pointed out that I was fooled by the Huffington Post - looks like Borowitz is a comedy writer. Ha, even though I couldn't really tell, because it came up on my feed as news. Distinguish, goddamnit! Either way, he got me. But Borowitz, to his credit, wrote a piece of satire that could be read as news, which there's something to be said about (besides my inane research skills). The other examples cited here - Michael Wolff, Gail Collins, the Post, the Daily News, and the AP reports - are all real, so I'm sticking with this as a serious news cycle issue (and how mainstream media's going to treat it being a serious question). But, yup: Gawker Weekend Writer hosed, to hysterical, self-serious effect. Mea culpa.