This week’s Star Magazine has a story that asks if the Gosselins of “Jon & Kate Plus 8” have an open marriage. Dad Jon was famously caught carrying on with a 23 year-old teacher while staying several hours away at his parents’ house, a charge which he, Kate and the other woman deny despite the wealth of evidence. Star says that he might not be the only one who has been cheating. They stop short of saying Kate is sleeping with her bodyguard and rely on a “local” and “fans” to suggest that their relationship is suspicious. Not only is Kate maybe sleeping with the bodyguard, she kicked Jon out of the house and is making him stay above the garage. It sounds like the smart thing to do short of kicking him to the curb:

Amid Jon Gosselin’s latest cheating scandal — he’s been linked to 23-year-old teacher Deanna Hummel — Star has learned that he may not have been the first to stray.

“I heard Kate was getting way too close with her personal trainer, so Jon started cheating,” Trisha Berlin, a fellow Pennsylvanian tells Star. Kate is also being linked to her hunky bodyguard — known as “Mr. Gray” to bloggers.

Kate spends so much time with the gray-haired guard that it has led many fans to believe that he may have taken the place of her husband while she crisscrosses the county on her book tour…

Talk in town is that Jon has been kicked out of the bedroom and is now sleeping in a living space above their three-car garage. And a neighbor confirms to Star that he’s seen workers doing construction on the Gosselin’s garage – including putting in skylights.

“Jon goes out to meet other women because Kate has given him the cold shoulder,” explains a source. “Their relationship is totally over. There is no love there any longer. But it’s Kate’s idea to make it seem like they’re still together, because she wants the show to go on.”

[From Star Magazine, first two paragraph from their website, rest of story from print edition, May 18, 2009]

So Star did what it always does and took an already good gossip story and stretched it to the breaking point with speculation that was so weak they didn’t even bother to claim that it was true. Of course Kate Gosselin is using this as an attempt to rally against the gossip press in general, which first revealed her husband’s cheating. She got all worked up over this BS piece in Star that no one would have paid much attention to if she didn’t bother to dispute it. Kate categorically denied the story to People, and she also revealed that she has regrets about doing a reality show and putting her family and friends on the line for cash and fame:

Two weeks after stories linked her husband, Jon Gosselin, with a 23-year-old school teacher, Kate says she is now the target of tabloid lies. “The next story coming out from the animals that stalk us is about our security person and his family,” Kate tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Already the allegations they’re making about me are disgusting, unthinkable, unfathomable, and I am horrified.”

“These are people who absolutely love us and want to see us through to the end,” Kate says of Neild and his family. “Of course, both of them travel with us at times, and we’ve spent holidays together, because, in this situation, your circle grows smaller and smaller, and it’s very natural to become friends with your manager, your publicist, your security team … they’re the only people you have left. And now they’re coming under fire.”

With few close companions, and her marriage to Jon hitting a rough patch, Kate says she is terrified that this latest round of stories will drive away the friends she and her family have left. “I’m totally panicking, and thinking, ‘We are going to lose our last set of friends.’ I keep calling them, begging, ‘Seriously, I’m so sorry. Don’t run away from us.’ They keep saying, ‘We’re fine, we’re fine.’ But they have paparazzi in front of their house. It’s so upsetting.”

Most troubling to her is the realization “we opened our world to this,” she says, adding, “but we willingly made a conscious decision to put this out there. Our friends and family did not. I had no idea we would potentially take down the people that we love around us.”

She adds: “It’s like saying, ‘Thanks for your support, let me sic the paparazzi on you.’ It’s very very difficult. It leaves us, essentially, alone and friendless. It’s terrible.

Ultimately, Kate says she does not know what she can do to stop the insanity. “The scary thing for me is [the tabloids] are going to take information and create a story. It’s a matter of, ‘When will they stop?’ They’re going to keep going, and they’ll make up stuff to connect the dots.”

[From People]

Kate doesn’t really get it, because the best way to deal with these fake stories is either to issue a denial statement through a PR person, ignore it, or quickly blog or twitter that it’s not true without making a big deal out of it. Don’t let us know that it’s getting to you, iron lady! This kind of crap goes with the territory and you have to let it blow over without feeding it. I read that story in Star and it sounded so fake to me that I didn’t even bother to repeat it. Kate shouldn’t either. The stuff about her husband, well, that’s another story.