How Jon Gosselin Stays So Famous

In a bid to keep his fame alive post-reality show, Jon Gosselin will take pictures with anyone who asks: Japanese tourists, Starbucks baristas, cab drivers—but even he doesn’t understand the public fervor surrounding him. “As long as they’re snapping, I’ll keep smiling,” he tells Jay Bulger for New York in an inside look at his life now. “I’m just a country boy with eight kids. I don’t really get it, either.”

Since Jon and Kate Plus 8 ended in a storm of controversy, Gosselin has been hanging around his new town, New York—armed with new management and a robust legal team—“rebranding himself" and dealing with paparazzi, who, he says, still try to conjure up stories about him by sending hookers to his room. Recently finding himself a guest at a senator’s fundraiser, Gosselin mulls his next move: “I’ve always loved politics,” he tells the senator. “I’ve become a public figure. Why not run? One day…”
(More Jon Gosselin stories.)