mynextmistake

The way Jill talks about her kids is so patronizing that I’m surprised they don’t all want to punch her in the face. “Oh, look at Kaylee and her cozy little abode! Oh look at Timothy and his… sweet little courtship partner!* Oh look at obedient and industrious little Renee, have I mentioned she’s on the market?” It just reeks of this smug sense of superiority, like what she really wants to say is that Kaylee’s house is too small and Timothy’s fiancé is ugly and poor Renee can’t land a man, and she’s better than all of them because she has a converted aircraft hangar full of cheap crap and a “hunky” husband and why is anyone paying attention to them when all eyes should be on her, Jill, and her hoodie blouses and her dime-store stripper makeup and her hideous tsotchkes and her lazy-ass excuse for a husband? Are narcissistic bitches more likely to become fundie, or does something about being fundie make someone into a narcissistic bitch? *I do take some solace in the fact that Heidi sees Jill and has zero time for her nonsense.

They have exactly the same thing, and what restaurant serves each patron half a muffin and 6 grapes? It looks like they ordered one meal and asked for it to be split between two plates. Maybe money is tight with the new baby on the way? Jessa doesn’t work, Ben can’t earn much as a pastor at a tiny IFB church, and I’ve always been suspicious of the theory that JB is wealthy enough to completely bankroll the lives of his adult children and their offspring, especially now that he’s tossed so much money into Josh’s defense. Ben looks miserable in all of these pictures, and who can blame him? I doubt his marriage to Jessa was ever a love match. They have no chemistry and nothing in common except the Bible. He probably married her because she was hot and he was desperate for sex. Now he’s stuck with no real job, no money, and four (soon to be five) kids and he’s not even in his thirties yet. Nothing ahead but a lifetime of cramped houses, dirty diapers, and teetering on the edge of poverty. I almost feel sorry for him.

Which makes me wonder — what about the women in these cults who aren’t attractive? The Bates girls are all quite pretty, and the Duggar girls and spouses of the Duggar boys are all above-average in appearance, but there have to be some women in Fundieland who have less pleasing countenances. What happens to them? These women aren’t allowed to be intelligent, educated, or interesting, and I assume they’re all equally capable of parroting bible verses and such. So really, to a depressing degree, their looks are all they have going for them. Do the ones who never catch a fundie guy’s eye just live with their parents forever?

The top picture looks like the Not Nurie on the left is restraining that woman. Maybe Jill was afraid she would catch sight of David in his tie-dyed leggings and try to lure him away with a bag of Funyons.

I finished the entire new series of Unforgotten (it’s available in its entirety to PBS Passport members). I don’t mind the new DCI, who starts out pretty awful but over the course of the series develops a pretty nice dynamic with the team. I didn’t love the plot, though. It wasn’t quite as bad as the “surprise! I’m a serial killer!” mess we got in series 3, but it wasn’t great, either. No spoilers, but I’ll just say that with the exception of one rather confusing and nonsensical twist, I had figured out what was going on by the end of episode 3. I also found that the fact that PBS edits out 15 minutes of each episode to air them in the states was pretty distracting here. The main storyline was still easy to follow, but some of the more character-centric arcs were really confusing because they had obviously edited out many of the parts of the episodes that were devoted to those arcs. I don’t know why they can’t just air the episodes in their entirety, or at least edit them more carefully.

She said in a recent interview that both Izzy and Sam are currently in school.

I think that the issues with JB and Michelle, Josh’s trial and conviction, and everything that happened afterwards had a pretty significant effect on Jill. When they moved, Josh’s conviction was still relatively fresh, Jill was recently postpartum, and the whole family was trying to adjust to a new schedule and a new town. I can see why she wouldn’t have wanted to broadcast it to the world that her kids attended school, especially in a small community where it would be easy for a determined person to figure out where they attended school. Hopefully the fact that she’s revealing it now means she’s more comfortable with her new life. In the beginning, Derick was as gung ho about homeschooling as Jill was. I think the fact that one or both of them were able to reassess and realize that school was better for the kids than being home with Jill all day was is a sign of growth. The kids will get a better education this way. Also, given Jill’s comments in the book about how her insular upbringing made it difficult for her to make friends and function in “normal” society, it’s possible that they realized that going to school would be good for the boys’ social development as well.

Season 26 of silent witness is on BritBox now. I feel like the stories have been degrading in quality for several seasons (including season 25 which just felt like one long, weird extra special episode). The plots are overly elaborate and the continuity in characterization is awful, and there are frequently questions left unanswered at the end of a story. Plus, I’m sorry, but there’s a reason that SW hasn’t launched David Caves’ career in the same way it has launched others, and that reason is that his acting is really, really bad. That said, I’m happy to note that so far, for me, S26 is the best season in several years. The stories have been interesting and easy to follow, and I really like both of the new characters they’ve added to the cast. I’ve watched 2 of the 5 stories and hope the trend continues.

I feel like so many of these fundie hate queens are just trying to make up for the fact that they have shit lives. The only reason to be pissed off that other people are happy is that you aren’t. Jill (et al.) have such limited lives. No education, no jobs, no nights out, no mimosas at brunch with girlfriends, no movies, no music, no magazines. Just pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding and scrimping and saving and grifting and praying. They don’t even get to enjoy their kids! No impromptu dancing to Taylor Swift in the living room, or seeing the kids in a cute costume in the ballet recital, or buying them a present just to see the look on their little faces, or watching them discover something they love (really love!) for the first time. Just beating and preaching and drudgery and knowing, deep down, that they’re failing their kids by setting them up for the same shit lives they have. So they cling to Jesus and claim it’s all worth it because they’re holier than the gays or career women or the Methodists or whoever. How else would you go on? I abhor Jill but I also recognize that Jill’s the broken product of a fucked-up misogynistic system. She’s the symptom, not the disease. Or maybe she’s both, I don’t know. It’s just sad. It’s all just sad.

Because he’s still deluded enough to think one of his Army for Jesus (probably Jed!) is going places, and doesn’t want them to be tainted by association.

She looks like she’s auditioning for amateur night at the Show Pony Gentleman’s Club.

They wouldn’t. While school shootings are horrific, they account for less than 1% of gun fatalities among American children. A child is much more likely to be killed with a gun in their home or neighborhood than they are in school, private or not. As for pennyroger’s comment about homeschooled children being smarter… well, I think what you put in is what you get out. Some homeschooled children, whose parents are willing to devote hours daily to educating them and who are provided with appropriate curriculum and enrichment activities, are probably more academically accomplished than some privately or publicly educated children. Unfortunately, many of the “homeschool families” I know have their kids spend an hour filling out workbook pages while their parents sit and play on their phones and then spend the rest of the day goofing off. I’m guessing Jessa is in the latter group.

He probably does want the option to bail. Even among fundies a courtship isn’t binding, right? I know they think of it as leading to engagement and then marriage, but plenty of fundies have had suitors take off, including Nurie. And poor Renee probably can’t afford to complain; it doesn’t seem like guys are lining up to try to court the Rod girls, who have no money, connections, or beauty to recommend them and who come with the baggage of a batshit crazy mother who expects regular paid trips to the nice Olive Garden.

I have long thought that Josh is the only child Michelle truly loves. She had a couple of years with Josh while her life was still relatively normal. Then they made the decision to stop using birth control and it was a downward slide into kid after kid after kid and homemade prairie frumpers and one bathroom for ten people and living off love offerings, and each kid became less of a blessing and more of a burden until she didn’t even bother going through the motions anymore. I don’t think she ever truly bonded with any of the other children. I don’t think she hates them, but I think she only feels the kind of vague affection you feel for someone you are related to but don’t really know. Because, fundamentally, she doesn’t know any of them. It takes effort to get to know someone, and she wasn’t willing to do the work. I also think that while they do believe the patriarchal crap they espouse, and both JB and Michelle would swear up and down that he’s the headship of the family, she directs a lot more of their actions than either of them would admit. She loved Josh, so Josh always came first. I think it’s as simple as that.

That’s not at all what I said. I don’t think he’s capable of being an upstanding guy; due to nature, nurture, or a combination of the two, he was always going to be an asshole. I do think a timely, appropriate response by JB and M, including referral to appropriate services, might have helped curb Josh’s sexually deviant impulses, and saved his later victims (especially 5 y.o. Joy) quite a bit of trauma. And I’ve noticed frequent references to this line of thinking. “Most families don’t handle this well. JB and Michelle did more than a lot of parents.” So what? Do they get a cookie or something? A shitty response isn’t less shitty just because someone else’s is more shitty.