Churchhoney

I wonder whether it's shorthand for "by the grace of God I was able to do this"? or some such? .... It drives me nuts too, but I suppose it would be even worse if she said something like that twice in every sentence. ETA: Ooops. I see that queenanne got there ahead of me.

Makes sense. I guess once you've said, "Sure, I'll be happy to marry this serial child molester," in hopes of moving up in the world, you've pretty much decided your own fate.

Yeah, pretty clear that the courtship way wouldn't be tolerated by anyone who called their souls their own, isn't it? ... Good method of preselection there if you're a culty parent, I guess.

Surely no merciful god would do this.

We might have known. Jim Bob's figured out a diabolical way to plant himself as a spy in the houses of all his children who have escaped into marriage. He inserts his devilish soul into their babies. And if the kids' photos are taken from just the right angle, you can see Jim Bob shining out from their eyes (and flapping in their fat Jim-Bobbish fingers). .... Sold his soul to the devil for this privilege (and the devil likes it too, I suppose)

Yeah, I completely agree. The Cathy connection is just baffling. Can't help but think that there isn't at least some degree of resentment or some neurotic something behind it. I can't imagine that he -- and Ben -- won't have buyers' remorse eventually. But it makes you wonder how soon it'll hit. I actually sort of think it's hit Derick a bit already, but I don't know why I think that.

It also frosts me that he has to say that he had previously had respect for Josh because Josh stood up and said what they "believe as Christians" -- that you should be "true to your wife." As if that's an idea that's confined to Christians and as if "standing up and saying it" actually means anything. I realize that duncy uneducated Joe wouldn't know any better than that since he's been fed this crap all his life, but the continual drumbeat from these people about how nobody who doesn't hold their religious beliefs has any ethics or morals or principles at all just drives me nuts.

I don't know why, but Derick strikes me as a somewhat developmentally arrested (not as bad as the Duggars, but childlike nevertheless...) over-idealistic dreamer who can be a hard worker at times but who also is far far far from being the sharpest tool in the shed. If somebody like that becomes enamored of a person -- and, in this case, even more so, of her whole family -- I can see how they could go quite badly astray, pursuing a romantic vision that's actually a complete mirage... I expect that almost all the leghumpers would be shocked if they knew what the Duggar life plan actually does to people and what kind of "adults" it produces, actually.

Check out those Gothard signs they have hanging around the house. It's amazing that there as coherent as they are, what with looking at those all the time. Torturing language is job one for a cult leaders, I guess. So they've learned it from their chief high headship.

The heart of the matter, I think. Damn and Blast TLC.

Yep. Ineed. This is the kind of situation in which you'd hope that the "cults don't usually last past the second generation" thing would kick in, as young adults who discover their lives have been ruined realize that the cult's responsible and withdraw their kids. I'd hope that would happen here, but I kind of have my doubts. Not everybody wakes up to smell the coffee, unfortunately.

Oh, absolutely. I firmly believe that she should get out. (Although I wish Josh would get out first, while pledging his financial support to all of them for life, since I think that would be the most honest thing anybody could do here.) But I don't think much of the advice to "get out and get a new husband." I think that would be much much harder for Anna to do than most people can possibly imagine, given her very abnormal background and upbringing. I think she should get out and make a life for herself and her kids. I expect, though, that the you-have-to-have-a-man culture she's living in will make it close to impossible for her to conceive of getting out and raising four kids on her own (daunting for anybody, though, obviously) and will also make her quail before her future because of finding herself clueless about how to garner that required husband, as well. She's been screwed in numerous ways by the limited experiences and knowledge she's been allowed to have by her Gothardite culture, I think.

Exactly. The budget cutting can't help but mean that the competition will be even tougher. And it was already impossible ... Also -- They showed The War Room when entertaining a 10- and an 8-year-old? Seriously?

Yeah, she may have been approached (Although, really, how many people on network camera crews, who actually see what these people are, really want to get it on with or marry Duggars, I wonder?). I was raised in a very similar way, though, and when you are you're likely not to have much idea what to do when you're approached. I even went to school every day -- but because I didn't have the socializing experiences -- just the kind that can happen in the classroom and such -- I was really really at a loss about this kind of stuff when I went out on my own. Intuitively being able to navigate this stuff is something that most people develop from grade-school crushes onward, I think, and most people get lots and lots of practice in having relationships and navigating them pretty much on their own. But Anna hasn't even had many of the same emotional experiences, I would bet, and she's been told that any experience of such feelings that she did have was to be beaten down. .... So I think she'd be pretty confused. And will be pretty confused if she ever does decide to go out on her own.

How anybody could watch these teasers and not come out thinking that these are the lamest people ever I don't know.

I expect that Derick has been disheartened by realizing how hard it would be for Jill to get qualified, so he may just -- understandably -- figure, Why bother?. I gather that IMB expects both members of a couple to have qualifications, and that the assisting spouse would have to have a bunch of college coursework that Jill couldn't even begin to complete without first getting much more up to speed on, you know, high school. And then, even if they went through it all -- and it wouldn't surprise me if it would take Jill five years or so, if she could even manage it, given her horrible background and the fact that she'll probably keep having kids -- Jill would have to compete against missionary wives who had actual college degrees, certainly advanced degrees in some cases, and certainly also real-world relevant experience -- such as teaching experience, executive experience, pastoring experience, volunteering or working abroad experience, fluency in one or several foreign languages, etc. Some of the women she'd be competing against may well have all of those things. I don't think there's any way that she could win in such a competition, and I expect that Derick, who clearly has had some doings with IMB and probably knows at least a bit about their requirements, may know that, too. So, that being the case, he may figure that it's hopeless.... And, in fact, I'm pretty sure it is. Jill is just not going to make the cut. That leaves them looking for a Plan B. And since plenty of people seem to buy that S.O.S., for example, is a mission and a ministry, I can see why he might be looking at that kind of thing instead. He's married a Duggar. He should have known what that meant on the education front, but I'm thinking he was probably a leghumper of some sort and bought their hype completely (Heck, when he bought in, a Duggar kid with the same academic background as Jill was working in a six-figure job in Washington and meeting with presidential candidates on a daily basis). I expect that only after the fact did he realize that there's no way a Duggar kid was going to qualify for something that requires formal academic background and real-world/work experience. So -- looking for Plan B, which has to require no such thing.

And add to the fact of her being a dating undesirable the fact that she probably has no experience at all getting to know people of the male persuasion on her own and thus little ability and little confidence when it comes to doing it. People are a lot like dogs when it comes to socialization. We don't have much ability to follow socialization patterns other than those we knew as kids without a lot of later-years retraining. And -- according to Priscilla in that crazy moms-and-daughters talking torso with Michelle -- at the Keller house if you felt a little attraction toward a person of the opposite sex, the rule was that, rather than acting on it in any way, you went to your parents, told them the bad news, and then they talked you out of it, repeatedly, until you got the idea. Because "god's best" people, apparently, were only the ones that your parents decided to introduce you to and then palm off on you. (That would be John Shrader, David Waller and Josh Duggar, in case anyone has forgotten. Because God apparently has very poor taste.) I expect there were Keller kids who didn't obey this rule. But I expect that Anna, like Priscilla, really did. So if she leaves Josh, she'll be going into the adult world pretty much a social cripple, as well as an untrained, uneducated, never-had-a-job single mom of four kids. It's a lot to ask somebody to construct a whole new life out of that beginning. I think she'll most likely be too terrified to try, even if the idea were to occur to her. Perfectly understandable, unfortunately.

Somebody's probably assigned to yell "Nike!" right before that scene comes on.

And your words mine.

Yeah, all I can think of is, Another woman wants to be with Josh Duggar? Seriously? And now, when his prospects for a future in which he can feed himself and all his many children look bleaker than ever? ... The most I could see is some momentary fake-rehab fling that would evaporate quickly when they joined the rest of the world again.

I'm sure it was six figures from the DC group. Low six figures, but six figures nonetheless. And then they had TLC money on top of that. And, of course, we don't know whether they actually saved any money -- because if they didn't, they had a lot of cash to play around with. For a very brief period. .... And Josh is so shallow and such a mess of a person and so impulsive, I expect it's more likely than not that he wasn't terribly careful with the money and didn't think too clearly about how quickly the end of that money might come (even though I'm sure in the back of his mind he was haunted by the thought of how quickly it might end .... but that kind of scary thought can sometimes make you even more careless with the cash. ... )

That's not going to last forever either. It never does, for anybody. At that point, she was still on teevee and it was her wedding and people weren't bored with her being married yet.. And even if these specials do brilliantly, the Duggars simply aren't going to be on tv forever. They were starting to fade before the weddings happened. And when you fade from tv you usually fade pretty quickly. And your fame fades pretty quickly right after that. Look at the quick plummets of American Idol's sales, for example. People are all about you, and then pretty suddenly they're not about you a bit. They're about somebody else.

But when the tv stops, the gravy train may take some time to grind to a halt. But it will halt. And then they'll have to live in other ways. If the kids only knew it, it would be so so so much better for their train to stop right now, so they have a longer stretch of the rest of their lives to use preparing for what's going to be a very rude shock and a lot more demanding lifestyle. When they're truly struggling for cash, it won't be nearly so easy to be self righteous. And that day really has to come. I just don't believe that Jim Bob has enough money squirreled away to support them all in a decent style forever. Nor do I believe that he's a good enough business man to build some new enterprise to sustain them. Seems to me that he pretty much depends on speculation and corner-cutting to make his money for him, and that's not a good long-term strategy. The best thing that could possibly happen to all of them is for these hideous "specials" to flop so mightily that even TLC won't want to continue them. It's really the next generation's only chance to get a clue and start changing their ways, I think. But I fear that isn't going to happen.

None of the Duggar apples has fallen far from the tree. .... And the married ones have married apples who may have sprouted from other trees, but after they fell they rolled right next to the Duggar trunk. Where Jim Bob spotted them and snatched them up as in-laws.

How about encouraging a horse to pee in Jim Bob's pocket? Would you refuse to do that? Because I wouldn't.