So you want to know what Kim Kardashian is like?

I can tell you a little bit – from the 8 minutes of time I spent in her company.
She is simply lovely in person. She is petite and seemingly quiet. And as a 29-year old woman who has lived a good portion of her life out on a reality TV show, I quickly realized that she is more than capable of answering any question thrown at her. But don’t tell her publicist that.

Actually there were at least three publicists on hand at the new eBay store here in New York City, where Miss Kardashian is auctioning off some of her personal items for charity.

Along with my own questions I was also there to get Kim’s responses to some of the CNN iReporter questions sent in by viewers on cnn.com. We had planned to have Kim answer 6 viewer/iReporter questions on camera and capture her reaction spontaneously. These questions weren’t exactly curve balls. One man wanted to know what Kim take on interracial relationships and how they are perceived publicly– a good question since Kim is dating an African American man. Another viewer wanted to know what she had planned for her future, and someone else wanted to know if Kim had any regrets with regards to her reality show. Two publicists interceded before we could get Kim to step up to the computer on hand and answer any questions. They said the questions were ‘mean’. They were not.

My camerawoman and I were ready to walk. We surely didn’t need to give Kim Kardashian more publicity. But, we stayed after negotiating to get at least get one viewer’s question answered. We were there partially on behalf of iReporters and we didn’t want to let them down.

We were allowed to show her one iReporter question… a question the publicist himself chose after watching them all as they were posted on cnn.com. The funny thing is, when I interviewed her, I asked two of the questions posed by viewers. And Kim handled them fine. During our interview we ended up discussing most of the topics brought up by the iReporters.

But, when I asked her if she cared to comment on her relationship with Reggie Bush, one of the publicists came running towards the camera. But it was too late. Kim had already begun to answer the question. And she did it all by herself without the overzealous handler jumping in to rescue her.