Move over, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Kennedys — there’s a new American power family, and they’ve got the country entirely under their command: the Kardashians! In the last few years, the crass and curvaceous clan has transformed from a well-off, if broken, family of a late notorious lawyer (Robert Kardashian defended O.J. Simpson in his highly publicized and controversial murder trial) to an American reality TV institution.

They’re the last relic of a mid-2000s era phenomenon — the family reality show — in which cameras follow a wacky and semi-famous family through all kinds of outlandish and ostentatious antics. The reality family crown was originally bestowed on the Osbournes, passed down through the Hogans and the Gottis, and finally landed on the Kardashians, where it has rested for the past few years.

The family originally gained notoriety when the patriarch defended O.J. and then tragically died a few years later, and then their fame grew even more when the girls’ mother, Kris, married Olympic legend Bruce Jenner. But the Kardashians didn’t rocket into stardom until their middle daughter, Kim (and her famous posterior), appeared in a widely watched sex tape with her then-boyfriend and R&B singer Ray J. The sex tape earned the family their own reality show on E!, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and the rest is history.

What sets the Kardashians apart from their reality TV family predecessors, and makes them the official royal family of trashy TV families everywhere, is their unrelenting desire to make themselves more famous.

Kris, Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Kendall and Kylie may often seem stupid and vacuous, but they are actually extremely tal

ented and driven — talented and driven fame-whores, that is. The Kardashian family has spent the last five years doing everything they possibly could to garner attention with the media, and their efforts have begun to show some results.

While the family just seemed to be a backdrop to Kim’s rising star at first, other family members, most notably Kourtney and Khloe, have finally managed to become famous on their own after three years of fighting their way out of Kim’s shadow.

Their new show, Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami, features the two sisters as they try to become Miami socialites in their own right, without the help of their sister. Conveniently, Kourtney has managed to get pregnant and Khloe managed to meet a famous athlete and get married at the exact same time their show premiered. Coincidence? I think not.

You can’t really get pregnant as a publicity stunt, but Khloe’s marriage, especially, feels like a desperate bid for attention. Was she really ready to marry the guy after knowing him for one month, especially when he’s the father of three kids and she’s a party girl with a potty mouth and an alleged coke habit? Or did she just feel like a lavish fairy-tale wedding (in the midst of a recession, no less) would be a good way to “promote her brand” and get more people watching her make a fool of herself on TV?

The Kardashians, with all their ridiculous antics and publicity stunts, force us to ask ourselves how much is too much when it comes to fame. Sure, it makes sense that they want to put their name out there and get people to watch their show, but when do you have to draw the line? A sex tape? A spur-of-the-moment marriage? A pregnancy-induced media blitz?

They’ve become so obsessed with the image they project to the American public that they’re willing to sacrifice the real lives that they could be leading. The Kardashians may be a media machine, but along the way they may have stopped being an actual family.