jon-kate

Jon and Kate Gosselin, the stars of TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ who have occupied tabloid covers for the last two months with rumors of their alleged affairs, are doing just fine.  By which I mean: they get paid $75,000 an episode, which over a 20-episode season translates to $1.5 million a year.  Us Magazine reports that the family needs the show to maintain its increasingly swanky lifestyle:

Kate, who grew up in a trailer park and didn’t go on her first airplane ride until her honeymoon to Disney World, now flies only first class for speaking engagements (mostly paid for by churches), sells signed photos of her kids for $20 a pop at appearances, and received a free tummy tuck after giving birth (Jon received a free hair transplant). A family source says while pregnant with the sextuplets, she grew “obsessed” with how many goodies the famed McCaughey septuplets received in 1997.

Jon, now a stay-at-home dad, was fired from his job at Style Craft Corp in 2004 after “spending much more time” on a “quest” for freebies than working, the company’s owner, David Rothermel, tells Us. (Rothermel finally has spoken out after growing furious at the couple’s well-worn claim that he was fired because the company didn’t want to insure his family.)

If you told me I could have $1.5 million a year, and the only catch is that I’d be married to Kate and we’d have eight kids, you wouldn’t be able to finish the sentence before I walked out of the room.  $30 million, and I’d think about.  If I could still have affairs.

(Full list of the Gosselins’ free swag from TLC after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »