Churchhoney

God and Jesus don't have very good aim, since to get this guy released they had to release four other people, too. And then of course there's the little matter of his wife's allegations of abuse and porn addiction against this guy. I'm guessing the Duggs' unadulterated joy over his release tells us a bit about how they really feel about Anna and Josh.

I can't see Jim Bob's lanyard. (which is driving me crazy) Can you tell anything that's on it? ... The sliver I can see looks a little different, but I can't really tell -- and those lanyards sometimes have different things on the back and on the front, or slightly different symbols for people who really are kind of in the same category. ... Like one person who's the guest in whose name the tickets were awarded gets one symbol and that person's retinue gets other stuff..... And I can't imagine what in the heck he would be other than a guest. He's certainly not a speaker, a staff member, a media member, etc. .... What are you thinking he is, if not a guest?

I'm not buying it. He didn't win lotteries for tickets in two states. That's way too much of a fluke. Actually, I don't think His Royal Unjustified Arrogance would even deign to enter a lottery that would allow just anybody to get in. Somebody with influence gave him tickets. They know there are lots of leghumpers out there, and having pictures get out of Blessed Jizm Boob and Blessed Clown Car on site can't hurt with that crowd, from whom they need votes.

Maybe someday "Duggar" will be a verb. And when somebody says, "Wow, she really Duggared me," they won't mean anything good.

Well, if they were my kids (or even if they weren't, really) I'd have something to say about John David's increasing skills as a pilot -- with an anecdote, probably, and something about his getting his instrument rating -- and about Jana's drawings for the nativity scene and what I especially liked about her work there. And those are just the things we know about. Honestly, even the most slow-coach people in my life always do something that I can mention. They're people, not stones. And I expect that Jana's busy around that house all day long. They do things -- maybe not major-milepost-type things, since they're not allowed to go to school or get jobs or interact with the outside world -- but actions, nevertheless. It's just that their parents neither know nor care. In this case, for example, it seems to be the general opinion that their parents didn't even care enough to write the incredibly lame birthday wish. I once had a boss who, when my fifth job anniversary came round, was asked, as everybody always was, to talk about me for about 30 seconds at the company meeting. She said she had no idea what to say and asked me to write something, then read it in a stumbling voice, and added a couple of phrases of her own that were a) inaccurate and b) made me look much less accomplished and competent than I was. It made me furious. There were a couple of other people spoken of at the same meeting for various anniversaries -- including a first anniversary -- who were enthusiastically gushed over in what were clearly their bosses' words, not their own. But I wasn't surprised -- she was completely wrapped up in herself and paid no attention to other people, so of course she didn't know the first thing about me and didn't care to learn. This Duggar birthday situation is the same, I've always thought. Just like my boss, they have to make these birthday pronouncements -- although in their case it's for their media fame, not because it's a workplace agenda point -- and since they neither know or care they do what they do. And what they do is crap. They are crap. And the main cause for whatever deficiencies their children have, too.

The self-satisfied grin on the face of this idiotic evil shithead makes me sick.

Kind of suggests that they don't know any significant things the person has done in the last year. Either because none of the kids has actually done anything significant in the past year. Or because Jizm Bob and Clown Car know so little about the kids that it takes looking back over their whole lives to collect enough facts to make a sentence. Or, more likely in the Duggars' case, both. Tragic excuse for a family. EMLB: "sense" and "sentence" are not the same. quite

I don't think that can possibly be. The number of tickets available to these things are very limited. These are relatively small venues, for the most part (for a country of over 300 million). And most of the tickets seem to be at the disposal of the state GOP for each event -- so Jim Bob's having been a one-term Arkansas house member isn't going to help him one bit in scoring a ticket to events in Wisconsin and South Carolina. There are hundreds and hundreds of former -- and current -- GOP officials in each of those states, many of whom likely want tickets, too. And many of whom would very likely be favored by the state parties to score the tickets, since getting them into the debate gets them into proximity of a large number of the party big dogs -- and thus in a position to get themselves some influence with those people and, along with it, hopefully increased influence for their state and their state party. He's exerting some much bigger influence that that somehow. And I can only imagine that it comes -- still -- from his TeeVee fame. And, yes, his presumed political influence.

In other words, they don't believe the Duggars are poison. We may think they are, but if that's true, the message certainly hasn't gotten through to candidates and their handlers and, presumably, their party.

That seems to be so, but then how the heck are they getting into the debates? Who's asking them there? They've come from a distance so they're not the local crowd that I assume is intended to be kind of the core of each audience. So they must be getting some kind of particular invite to get in. So from whom? And why why why?

Well, I know I do .... Well, I think I remember Bin introducing Jessa to more popular music ever since he came on the scene, and not all of it even in Christian popular genres but in plain old popular genres, as I recall ...... So I guess a) that "no pop" wasn't the rule for the Seewalds' kids and b) that JB and M are content to run all the really big stuff in their in-law-kidlets' lives but leave some of the more minor portions alone? I mean, they may just have too many people to run to worry about running every aspect of Bin's and Derick's lives, so they just focus on the big stuff.

Once Jim Bob's horrifying image is printed on your brain, it always seems as if you just saw it yesterday!

Plus, they seem so damn shallow and trivial in every other way when they actually say or do anything, I have a very hard time believing that they actually are deeply concerned with this stuff at all. I doubt they ever give it an actual thought -- of course, that's assuming they have any actual thoughts, which I guess I also doubt -- but despite that they keep posting all this stuff. I don't get what's going on at all.

Well, I guess that demonstrates that somebody's surveying really shows how many Americans still madly embrace the Duggars and their way of life. Otherwise, I don't see why "family values" politicians would so busily embrace a family that pops out a million kids then pretty much totally ignores them, including shoving their perpetration of and victimizing by intra-family sexual molestation under the rug. Oh, wait. I forgot. Duggar lovers think they're fabulous parents. ..... The 26-year-old kids -- still living at home with no jobs or lives or friends or families of their own -- have to take the younger kids out alone to buy a treehouse, while mom is who knows where? Fainting on the couch under the confusing influence of her tranquillizers and her Starbucks -- preparatory to whipping off to a national political debate? Not "homeschooling" her other kids, certainly, since she had to import somebody from another state to do that. And, really, it's great that 26-year-olds are still full-time babysitters and chauffeurs while the actual parents include their last names when they sign birthday wishes to their kids. I swear, this disgusting family somehow throws a magic spell over their audience.

I second that request. It's as bad as posting the closeups of Jim Bob.

Yeah, I guess there are a lot of philosophies trying to explain the nature of the world with concepts of balance, and things being done or experienced for the sake of someone else and so on. Trying to make the whole thing fit together like a big coherent picture.

I'm right there with you on that. .... Oddly, thinking that way seems to make some people feel better. I can't fathom why.

I have recently been dealing with a loved one who is in a prolonged state of pretty horrible suffering. And a couple of people have said to me that I "have to believe that the Lord is allowing this to continue because the person's suffering is doing good for someone else," even though we don't know who that is or how or why that should be. I don't have to believe that. I do have to believe that anyone who says it is pretty empathy-free, however. There's a whole big universal drama that they're a part of going on in some people's heads, I guess. And being wrapped up in such a thing keeps you from actually looking at what's going on in the real world in front of your eyes. I'm sure that's the case with the Dillards' "mission," for example. I can see how people with this kind of approach really believe in their own great intentions. But they can cause a fair amount of misery as they blunder about the world blind to what's actually in it, in this way.

Bingo.

You aren't going to see that unless someday most of the kids do get married and move onto a nearby landfill-adjacent lot, and JB and M decide to make some bucks by turning most of the TTH into a Bed and Breakfast for All Your Leghumping Needs. And have Jana run it. She already sits at the reception desk every day. She might as well check people in, too. .... And, heck, they might as well fill some beds. Grandma would miss doing 15 loads of laundry a day otherwise.

Well, you know, it's the same kind of thing as the Duggars' approach. There have always been plenty of Christians, including very high-profile ones, who elevate the whole conversion/spiritual-has-priority-over-physical/suffering-is-holy stuff. And MT is one of them. (some of them are grifters, of course, but while I've seen that accusation thrown around at MT I don't know whether anybody's ever produced any evidence about that ....) I think it's the danger with any adults who are highly theoretical or who build really intense fantasy worlds in their minds (many artists, sometimes scientists) and certainly adult true-believers in religion -- their concepts about faith or whatever kind of world they have in their heads take precedence over people, totally. If you have a bunch of very strongly held ideas or principles and you lack true empathy, then in your world people for you sort of serve as illustrations of abstract principles. They aren't real to you; they're puppets in your intensely felt play. People like that probably think they're doing well by other people when they tell them how their lives are an illustration of God's plan for the world.

Wow. That sounds like riveting viewing. Buying lumber. And the car lot returns. And what a lot of birthday fun for Jana, age 26. (and John David, really.) .... Don't those children have, uh, parents? What the hell kind of parents send their 26-year-old kids out on this kind of errand -- on those kids' frigging birthday? Maybe this is what they're counting on. Because absent some sort of catastrophe this could be one of the most boring shows yet. And that's saying something. Maybe there's a fundie carpenter sniffing around Jana? Because they seem pretty excited lately about showcasing her power-tool skills.....

Well, this gives me mixed feelings. I'm glad that she's talkative and funny (and loves cheese), because she apparently has some fun with people, which is not something I'd be convinced of otherwise. On the other hand, the fact that she pretty much completely hides those things in the media part of her life makes me think she is probably unhappy with the media aspect of her life -- or at least for some reason chooses to mostly hide her real self during the media part of her life, which can't be fun. So that makes me sad for her, because who wants huge galumphing unavoidable parts of our life wherein you feel you can't be yourself at all? ... Not that any of this surprises me, I guess. In fact, I'm kind of shocked by how closely it seems to match what I would have expected --

I don't know. Aside from his being a doughy, kinda chubby blob of a whiter than white guy, I don't think he looks like Josh at all ..... Although I guess it's true that all guys like that kinda look alike.

Possibly more like "heaven help Bin," since he's the one who'll be filling the world with a passel of (unstoppable, unremovable, proliferating internet) videos in which he a) looks like an idiot and b) by the end of the series demonstrates that he's incapable of improvement. That's okay, though, I guess, since I can't imagine anything that'll wake him up to the reality of his situation other than a nasty series of short, sharp shocks. And since he's a dad already and planning to be more of a dad in future, he really truly needs to wake up from his unfulfillable dream of being some kind of Calvinist but nevertheless terminally hip and cool media star.