Churchhoney

Well, that's the other thing, isn't it? I don't think there's any way the "webcam" allegation could be true, for example. How would either of them get near an un-parentally-monitored webcam? It isn't as if Josiah was working in a political-campaign office or anything. : )

I agree. I also kind of expect the deal would have imploded eventually in any case, though. I can't really see Marjorie ultimately passing JB-and-M's muster as a suitable -- suitably malleable and brainwashable, that is -- in-law, even for one of their apparently harder-to-control children. She appears to have some backbone. That's not a Duggar-friendly trait.

I have a hard time mustering up outrage over an 18-year-old who's forbidden to hold hands (or kiss or embrace or dance or spend time with someone without parents or 10-year-old siblings present) who goes horny-crazy and wants to talk sexy with an intended marriage partner over the phone. ... Not sure how Josiah or any Duggar would manage webcam sex, however. Especially with a partner also living in a Gothard-y household with multiple children.

When I think about it, I guess it's not surprising that people who believe that life's biggest imperative is to convince everybody on the planet to think exactly what they think are inherently blinkered and selfish people to whom somebody else's well-being doesn't even occur as an abstract concept. They're just really really limited beings who can't or won't look beyond the ends of their own noses in any way whatsoever. A curse on TLC for encouraging their stupidity-driven arrogance for lo these many years. Although, really, I suppose they're too limited to do much actual damage with their "mission" except to the wallets of their U.S. donors -- and most of those people are probably just like the Duggars except that they're less fertile and never got a tv show. So I can't say that I really care what happens to their wallets.

Just one more instance of JB and M screwing over one of their children -- and in this case by extension their daughter-in-law and four "grandbabies" as well -- because they're stupid, arrogant, mean and cheap.

The more I think about the shape of this thing, the better I like it, though. Constructing a Berlin Wall of crap is very well in keeping with Duggar family principles.

Except for the ones that had the "oreo balls" -- which I assume are the white ones -- and they look to take up about half of the masterpiece/? http://www.snackworks.com/recipe/white-chocolate-oreo-cookie-179955.aspx To wit: 1 pkg. (8 oz.) brick cream cheese, softened 36 OREO Cookies, finely crushed 4 pkg. (4 oz. each) white baking chocolate, melted Instructions Mix cream cheese and cookie crumbs until blended. Shape into 48 (1-inch) balls. Freeze 10 min. Dip balls in melted chocolate; place in single layer in shallow waxed paper-lined pan. I dunno.

Okay, thanks. That's a little better. .... Not much, though! ... Although I guess the actual display doesn't look a whole lot better than the denuded one, so what the heck, I guess. Wonder how many seconds it took for Jizm Bob to finish that off.

I expect the house has some pretty substantial echoes too, given that it's just a few humongous rooms. I doubt that that main room ever actually sounds -- or feels -- like part of a home. It must either feel like an emptied-out high school gym after the big game is over, when there are only a few people in it, and like an auditorium packed with antsy middleschoolers when it has a crowd.

Well, given how much of the show has been taken up by this kind of stuff (I gather from commentary -- can't speak from my own experience, so maybe this is wrong...) ... Anyway, given how much of this has been shown (I hear) and how many people they've seen telling them that they just love love love watching their wonderful, beautiful family, watching all the children and so on, it wouldn't surprise me if they believed it was cute and attractive. That's a large part of what's made up the show and millions of people love it and praise them for the way they live. So ....

Particularly like the photo from the back. Pretty. Wonder whose idea it was to include that in the displayed photos? Someone with the same degree of taste and creativity as Sierra, I guess.

Poor guy. It's like his face is the picture of Dorian Gray, only a completely visible one, registering for all the world to see the warping of his soul as he's gradually crumpled and subsumed into the Empire Duggar. What a couple of years he's had. Wonder how much of it he anticipated.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people there aren't at the point where, when they're gone from 'home,' it's essentially being 'gone from homelessness and joblessness.' If you're down far enough on your luck, then the $7500 you'd pay for this could pretty much equal what you'd be spending at home, if you'd had a home. I'm guessing that when you put those people together with some richer super-Christians like the Duggars who are willing to pony up this amount and support any dependents left behind who nees supporting -- since it is a lot less than rehab generally costs, and it's supposedly super-Christian so super-Christians would see it as an answer -- you'd have enough people to make up the work crews that the RU runners make their money off of.

Well, I'll beat my usual dead horse and say 'Not necessarily and not so young.' Having been warped in pretty much the same way and to pretty much the same degree as Jessa, my long-considered conclusion is that, while you can change some things, many of the worst things are buried too fucking deep in your brain for you, or therapy, to have any success at all in eradicating them. I've struggled for decades to root out some of the trained-in responses I have and can't get at them, apparently no matter what. They're way deeper than thought and lightning fast and they just run you, even when you consciously see them as contrary to everything you want to be and -- maybe, you hope -- everything you actually would be if you hadn't been deliberately warped and damaged. ... And that's me, who's old enough and has seen enough and is temperamentally different enough from the people who formed me to have what you'd think was a good basis for rooting it all out. And yet, despite some changes, I'm still what I was made, in all too many ways. .... And then Jessa -- she's too young, too immature even for her young age (largely by her parents' design) and, probably, too dumb and arrogant (made that way partly by having had her family put on fucking television as moneymaking role models), even to have any idea yet how wrong it all is and where the wrongness came from. She'll have to notice a bunch of things first and notice their wrongness and hate them before she can even begin to try to change. Right now, she hasn't even had a chance to get to that point. For me, it's going to be quite a few years before I blame her for being exactly what she was made and not even trying to change it.

Thinking that makes Jackson the living symbol of the whole damn family.

Hey, thanks! ... When I thought of it, I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before. Where have we all been? Guess we're too nice to have thought of it. ha

I guess it could be symptomatic of somebody who doesnt even think of cooking. Although I guess somebody who doesn't even think of cooking at the same time as she talks about having 10 to 20 kids with no one actually employed in her family has a mental problem by definition.

I'll bet Jim Bob has a very good eye for potential spouses who are weak enough for this to happen easily. As well as for potential -- but ultimately nixed -- spouses who may not be weak enough. (maybe this is what happened with Jana's rumored suitor ...) Control freaks, even seemingly dumb ones, often have great perceptions when it comes to opportunities to manipulate people, I think.

Apparently even JIzm and Michelle realize nobody in their family actually knows each other.

And in return Cosby could teach Josh the English language, how to add, some stuff like that. Then Josh would walk away the winner.

They probably scan the specials pretty carefully before they decide on which chain restaurant they'll bestow their (cheap) glory.

I agree that they certainly didn't mean to harm Izzy. They're just misguided. Way misguided. And dim. I have big reservations about people photographing children in moments of anger and misery, though. I wouldn't want to be photographed in moments like that. And I actually believe that "Do unto others" applies to kids as well, so I've never photographed a child being unhappy, and I never would. .... Kids kind of have to say they think the picture is funny, after the fact. To me, it's just really disrespectful.

Maybe they're saving it to thrill us with as part of the new series that starts up in early spring. First episode will probably be Dumb Dumbs take Dum Dums to Central America to help convert Christians to Christianiity.

This must be an example of the wonderful values that Jim Bob and Michelle teach their children and that viewers have so missed without the show. Over 2.4 million people tuned in the other night to watch these idiots. And they're supposedly the epitome of family-friendliness in the media. So I'm sure we're all missing something. Not sure whether I'm more confused about why you would do this, why you would photograph it, or why you would post it online. Doesn't contradict my theory that they're all just extremely stupid, though. I hope Izzy, Spurgeon and Meredyth all support each other in their quest to find a good therapist one day to help them deal with the crap that happened to them as little ones. They're all going to need it.

In particular, this "encourager" thing that everybody gets drives me crazy. I can only assume that it's some bit of Gothard speak that I haven't seen the origin of. Cause it makes no sense at all in the case of the Duggars, who never encourage anyone to do anything and clearly don't want their kids to be encouraged to do anything. Where would those kids learn to "encourage" anybody, since nobody's ever modeled "encouraging" them? Or are we to think that another Duggar-child duty is to be always "encouraging" their parents in something? Not only do they give every kid the same birthday greeting, but those greetings are basically meaningless. Or just plain nuts.