In Defense of Kim Kardashian

A lot has been said about Kim Kardashian in the last 48 hours. A lot of it has been vicious, critical, dismissive, etc. Even I have issued my fair share of sarcastic KardHumph tweets. But as a philosopher trying to approach this situation from an objective standpoint, what can be said?

1. No one should even dare to claim what is going on in either of their heads. It seems like every single news source–whether it be speculative gossip like the bullshit column in my local newspaper (not linking it only because I don’t want to give her the benefit of the web traffic) or People Magazine online citing a “source close to the couple”–seems to have insight as to what Kim and/or Kris is thinking at the moment. But come on, who besides their close friends and family has any idea what they are actually thinking or feeling? Like, sure, you can observe someone’s behavior and make a generalization about it… but jesus, moratorium on people being like “Kris actually loved her sincerely” or “Kim only wanted to increase her fame.” It seems like this goes without saying, but how the fuck could you ever actually make those claims with authority?

2. Divorce sucks. Even if the entire thing was orchestrated by Kris Jenner in conjunction with the executive producers of E!, a humiliatingly brief marriage which played out in front of THEWHOLEMOTHERFUCKINGCOUNTRY doesn’t seem super glamorous. In fact it seems awfully embarrassing. What I’m saying is that even if the whole thing was planned out for the sake of TV (which I don’t believe, but who can say?) she obviously is getting a shit ton of negative press that is flushing her public image down the metaphorical drain faster than Schwarzenegger’s. So even if her marriage was born of some kind of fucked up momager-induced Stockholm Syndrome, getting divorced is not awesome and it seems like we should be easy on both of them because ending a relationship is not ideal or hilarious or convenient.

3. Marriage….. what? A lot of shit has been said about the analogy between Kim Kardashian’s brief marriage somehow having implications for gay marriage. I’m a huge ass proponent of gay marriage, don’t get me wrong. But as a Twitter friend of mine mentioned, not everyone stays in love for forever. If her recent blog post (in this case not linked because I feel lazy and want to finish this but google it if you didn’t somehow see it on a news site) Kim claimed that she sincerely hoped her marriage would work. Whether that’s true or not, a short (straight) marriage not working out doesn’t really undermine the sanctity of marriage, does it? I mean neither does gay marriage OBVI, but plenty of people get married and it doesn’t work and plenty of people stayed married for decades yet hate each other. This doesn’t negate either or any of those people’s ability to marry each other which is why I still maintain that anyone ever at all should marry if they want to regardless of gender, but it also doesn’t illegitamize Kim’s marriage just because it didn’t last. Would you rather she raise a half dozen children in a house where the parents hate each other? *coughlikeherparentscough*