I finally hit the wall. I can't take it anymore. As a reporter and admitted purveyor of pop culture, I must bite the hand that feeds me and officially swear off any mention of all things Kardashian. America's First Family of Fluff has reached maximum exposure for me. The crush of this Kardashian overload is killing so many of my brain cells that I fear for my mental health.
On any given morning I catch up on world and local events, checking numerous news websites along with various gossip publications. Sadly, I now typically see as many as half a dozen separate stories about one or more members of this Brood of Banality (fill in any "K" name here) engaged in the most mundane of activities to announcing some purported bombshell that either just aired or is being teased on their E! series.
But is it necessary to get daily updates of Kim's rants over her pregnancy "haters" or to know that Khloe hits the gym twice a day or that Kylie has won the affection of Tyga? The mad rush of stories of their daily routines to shilling for their reality show (I could not use the word reality more loosely) is making my head spin. I am convinced that millions of people must know more intimate details about the Kardashians than they do about their own families.
All this was BEFORE a media juggernaut named Caitlyn burst into our consciousness. By virtue of the sheer volume of coverage paid to Caitlyn's transformation, I must assume she is the most important story of our time. Is Caitlyn's transition newsworthy? Certainly. But the former mister Jenner has learned plenty about the manipulation and management of message from her ex wife and matriarch of the K clan. Caitlyn now appears to be beating Kris at the game she had mastered. Caitlyn's coming out is exploitation and media orchestration redefined and she certainly has our attention. Vanity Fair reported 9 million unique views of their site following the Jenner cover story and Caitlyn grabbed over two million Twitter followers in just two days. There are now countless new story lines that Kris can pounce on. We are already seeing the claws come out in the Vanity Fair article between Caitlyn and Kris. Now that Kris's ex is out as a woman, how long before she uses the "B" word to describe her former spouse?
Was it merely a coincidence that Caitlyn's coming out coincided with the expiration of the Patriot Act, causing the NSA to lose its authority to collect the phone records of millions of Americans with impunity and without oversight? Maybe "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" was part of a decade-long secret NSA plan whereby the agency could control us by numbing our minds with senseless blather, amusing Americans into submission and distraction. There is so much Kardashian koverage (see what I did there?) that they almost warrant their own network to rival CBS, ABC, NBC and FOX. Let's call it KBS, the Kardashian Broadcasting System. I suspect it would just be known by it's initials since all it would air is Kardashian BS. Isis? Unemployment? Presidential politics? Sure, they are all objectively important stories, but what we really seem to want to know as a country is: who wore it better -- Kylie or Kim. Or Caitlyn. Please make it stop.