Churchhoney

Looks as if it could be the lobby of some big Amish restaurant or other. Maybe it was taken when the Girls Hit the Road? And Anna somehow thought she was dressing the child up in that mismatched tumorous head explosion? (reminds me of a dress somebody once made on Project Runway that was supposed to look like cancerous tumors (and did))

I expect that among the would-be Duggar suitors there are both "creeps and weirdos" as we might define those and "regular people" whom JB would define as "cs and ws" because he realizes he couldn't control them. Because, you know, guys look at young women and want things. Actually, though, my money is on there being somewhat more cs and ws as we would define them. I really can't imagine that too many normal guys have ever looked seriously at the Duggar girls, their lifestyle, their parents and the insane rules they follow and retained the smallest desire to get involved with that family.

The thing is, it's virtually never a matter of just suddenly changing everything and running a million miles away. Nobody can really do that. People who seem to have done it have in fact been gradually working their way away from a situation mentally for years or even decades. And while it may look as if they've just suddenly seen the light one day and run, the "sudden" part is just the tip of a big unseen iceberg that happened inside them, sometimes without any external signs at all. I don't think it's possible for the human mind to just suddenly grasp something and instantly rebel in a big way. If the Dillard iceberg is slowly slowly slowly drifting away from the Duggar landmass (okay, mixing metaphors here...), then it's all to the good because that's how change can start. If Jilly Muffin cuts eight inches off her hair because it's hot outside, then that would be a real victory, even if it would seem like nothing to most people. Some of Duggardom's grip on her mind -- of which she's been literally unconscious up to now because that's how brainwashing works -- would be broken. A new piece of information would have displaced a rule she's slavishly and unconsciously followed to the degree that she couldn't even imagine behaving differently before the heat gave her a push. A this-hair-doesn't-work-in-this-heat serious trim could someday lead to Izzy getting a college education and dating girls who are feminists. Really. Embrace the Dillard fashion changes and keep hope alive.

Well, if this is true, it goes a long way toward convincing me that, whatever else is the case, Derick must be, essentially, sane. lol

On behalf of those of us who didn't watch, thanks for sharing this. Something tells me that nobody who hangs around the Duggars grasps any vocabulary nuances, including those that your average 11 year old understands. If somebody did, they'd probably go mad listening to Duggar talk, I suppose.

"You don't have to be compatible." Having it all veer toward child prostitution. Both logical outgrowths of this "Christian patriarchy" crap. In each mega-family you have one dumb, greedy arrogant jerk deciding everything for everybody. In other words, wiping out the personhood of everybody he fathered so he can move them around like chess pieces to serve his own ends. And this is what God wants, because it'll bring on the Kingdom of Heaven. They're horrible, horrible -- and really really stupid -- people.

Yes, he sure does look stressed. And he oughta look stressed. He's spent his entire adult life ruining life for 19 and counting young people, as well as for his wife, and trying hard to win converts among other men to get them to ruin multiple people's lives too. About time some of that dawned on him and it stressed him out big time. Of course I'm sure that's not why he's feeling stressed. Nevertheless, I'm thrilled that he is stressed, the stinking pinhead dick. I hope he never feels any way but massively stressed again. Maybe that could finally teach him something. Except, naaa, it won't.

Especially since, according to Jizm Bob, the Duggars' S.O.S. mission trips have been "life changing." Uh. Yeah. So life changing that it's inspired you to bring cut-price DumDums as your oh so holy contribution to the locals. Good grief.

I don't know. Gothard's pretty specific about the importance of wearing lot of makeup. Women are supposed to use it to call all attention to their "countenances" rather than leaving men's eyes free to roam about their vile satanic defrauding bodies. Given the devotion they showed to Gothard in the past, at least, I'm sure they developed a pretty major makeup habit, and old habits die hard. I expect they may wear the two tons of eyeliner on a daily basis, actually.

Wonder if this also has something to do with not actually having any particular friends -- just co-travelers in your cult (so you might not know which would actually want to come to your party, since they're all related to you in the same way -- and not much related to you at that), fans (whom you don't know at all), and co-famewhores (like the Duggars, who may or may not want or be available to come either, just like your other fellow travelers). Gothard certainly preaches heavily against having friends. (especially for women and offspring. I guess male headships are allowed to have something more like friends, but really I don't believe they're encouraged to actually hang out together in a friendly way either, just to slightly bond over their Gothardly godly headsmanship while plotting how to spread the word about it. Like everybody else, they're encouraged to only hang with the nuclear family, I think.)

I think he'd need a lot of support at first. But, actually, I think that with enough support, Josh would be one of the few Duggars who might actually adapt to Europe (and to other non-fundie places) and like them in the long run. Whatever else he is, to me he's also the only active rebel among the Duggar kids so far. I also think he's a lazy jerk who has continued to milk his fundie upbringing to earn money and feel part of at least some community. But I don't actually think he believes any of it or that it actually appeals to him in any way. If he survived in a non-fundie environment long enough to be comfortable admitting this (and I do think that it would probably take a dedicated team of counselors and charitable givers to help him survive that long), I think he'd be one who could live among the world's heathens happily and eventually even find work to support himself at least modestly. He's utterly uneducated, of course, and certainly no genius, but I don't believe he's stupid either and he once had ambitions -- which indicate at least a bit of mental energy. In the long long run, I can see him finding heathen lands about a billion times more comfortable an environment than he ever found Duggardom and potentially rallying his somewhat limited abilities to find work, make friends and build some kind of life among the hellbound. Obviously, since no charity dedicated to supporting him is going to emerge, I expect he'll just lazily fall back on pretending to be a Jizm Bob clone so he can continue sucking on pop's teat to survive. Ain't gonna be pretty, though, in the long run.

Yeah, sometimes I think that, too. I'm still not convinced he's that hard core, though. An awful lot of kids his age (almost all kids his age?) come off as pretty hard line about something, seems to me. So I wonder whether part of it isn't just his immaturity. Seems to me he clearly seems more open to experiences than the Duggars, and that's one of the things that moves you away from that hardline-teenager thing, ultimately. It's also not unusual at all for hardline teenagers to double down when their pronouncements are challenged, out of insecurity about things, whether they're conservatives or wild-eyed liberals, so I can't take his doubling down on Calvinism completely seriously. I kind of expect that his urges to go to concerts and meet rappers may prove the more powerful force in his life, in the long run. He has had a few more experiences than Duggars, and that's probably cracked some of his windows at least a bit. And where there's a crack, there can be change. I also get the sense that he kind of likes people, unlike Jessa, who seems scared to death of strangers, and sociability is something else that, long term, can crack people's windows. In short, I wouldn't be surprised if it all turns out as you say. Nevertheless, I still hold out a little long term hope for Bin's ability to change a bit.

Well, Tabitha Payne is there. I expect they just added the M kids to her schedule. (which would see her schooling kids from pre-school through the end of high school -- wherever that is in Duggardom. Quite a job.)

Or, you know, being unable to find frozen lasagna at the local grocery.

Good points about Bin growing up and changing and Jessa maybe not. I hope he actually looks at the social-media responses to his silliness! I sort of think that he might, since he does have some interest in education and so on, unlike in the ruling philosophy of Duggardom. I haven't really given up all hope on Bin and Derick gradually dragging Jessa and Jill into slightly different worlds than the one they grew up in.

That's probably the scenario. On a less tv-oriented note, though, the Seewalds were in Vision Forum, and it was headquartered in San Antonio. So it's likely he would have met some south Texans through that route.

So...What footage have they created this season that they can repeat next season? Will they create wholly meta episodes consisting entirely of repeats of stuff they've already repeated? Inquiring minds -- and aspiring reality-tv producers -- want to know. And how many episodes can you tease with a tagline like "Tune in for the announcement of a life-changing event"? Especially once people know that it's more likely to be just a diaper-changing event. Network execs want to know the answer to that one.

Isn't that the standard conservative-Christian preposition, though? I don't know why it is, but I know I've read it tons of times. I always thought they must have brought it over from some old, now-forgotten quotation or something.

2. Pray. And, hey, it worked!

Fixed it for ya.

Wow. Way to say nothin in way too many words. Also -- on the marriage front -- methinks he doth protest a bit too much.

My guess is that whichever one does it has already cherished a vague escape plan and nursed his/her hatred of the whole arrangement for years already. Generally speaking, they're like the frog in the pot of water being brought to a boil. They're used to the outrages -- and believe they're what Jesus wants -- so they aren't likely to notice much even as the outrages increase to what might seem to be killing level. And I continue to believe that at least the vast majority of them just aren't very bright, in addition to being effectively brainwashed. Having the damned show end and eventually realizing that real poverty was about to hit them and likely linger for a lifetime could well spur somebody to walk, I believe. But since they have so many tv fans who keep Jim Bob's gulag going, I guess that's not going to happen for a while.

I'm not surprised that TLC keeps going with this. When you think how hard a ton of people work to put together the shows that survive on other networks -- and the amount of money it takes to conceive of and direct them and so on -- this must have essentially zero production costs in comparison. It's worth zero as viewing apparently, based on people's comments. But they're still getting nearly a million and a half people to watch it every week and, potentially, hang around for other shows in nearby time slots and see the advertising for other TLC shows, plus a little ad money. Financially, I'll bet it's kind of like getting a million and a half people to watch a test pattern twice a week.

I basically think the same thing except that I think I must be defining "high school diploma" more broadly than you are, and I think that Crown goes with the broad definition, too. I'm not sure, but I think that you're saying that Joe must have the GED, because he attended Crown but didn't go to a high school that offered any kind of state-sponsored diploma. But I don't think that's the case. I'm looking at Crown as what I believe they are -- a school that fully embraces the complete validity of all homeschooling diplomas, including those from states that put absolutely no requirements on homeschoolers at all. As I read it, Joe absolutely did not need a GED to attend Crown -- nobody there did -- as long as they have a high school diploma. And a high school diploma that has no backing by anything or anyone except Michelle Duggar, who wrote it out and printed it on her home computer printer, is just as valid and fully acceptable as any other high school diploma. That's clearly the stance of the fundie homeschooling movement. The GED is a state-sponsored credential. And they'll accept it. But it's not necessary, since they also happily accept the non-state-sponsored credential that is a diploma from Duggar High School. That's the context that I think is being used there. But Joe has a diploma, almost certainly. Are people saying that Michelle actually only gave diplomas to some of her kids? (And on some accounts, only to Jessa?) Joe graduated from Duggar High School, almost certainly. So he has a diploma. Therefore he doesn't need a GED. ... I don't see any way that such a very very fundie school could require homeschooled kids to have some kind of diploma other than the ones that homeschools in many states are permitted to give out without any involvement by the state or by a homeschooling association or whatever.

You have just demonstrated that, in Michelle's eyes, My Breast Friend is very likely the best invention ever devised in the history of the universe. (Well, My Breast Friend and Jim Bob's idea that they should try to have 19-plus kids....)