Keeping Up With the Kardashians gave America its real first family

almost 5 years in The guardian

Show that gave us Kim, Kylie and Kendall is ending after 14 years, leaving behind a Kardashianised world
The first time the Kardashian family’s private life became part of the public conversation was not in their reality TV show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians (known as KUWTK), which turned them into global phenomena and will, it was announced this week, end after 14 years and 20 seasons. Nor was it with Kim Kardashian Superstar, the notorious sex tape of probably the best known member of the family, which was released a few months before the launch of KUWTK, leading many to suspect that the family used the tape to promote their reality show (the family has always denied this.)
Instead, it was back in 1994, when Kim’s godfather, OJ Simpson, sat in her childhood bedroom and contemplated suicide after the murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, for which he was widely suspected to have been responsible. Simpson’s best friend was Kim’s father, Robert Kardashian, and Robert later gave an interview to the US journalist, Barbara Walters, in that same bedroom. “OJ was sitting right where you are, Barbara, and as I walked in I saw wrapped in a towel, a gun. I said, ‘OJ, my daughter could never sleep in this bed, she’d know what happened here,’” said the concerned father, giving global interviews in his teenage daughter’s private space. The Kardashian sisters have been accused of being artificial, but they acquired their talent for turning their lives into entertainment naturally. Continue reading...

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