Churchhoney

Oh, wow. Me, too. And if I am involved in something that distracts me from my usually constant reconnaissance, I jump a mile if I suddenly detect someone too close behind me. ... On the bright side, at work I'm considered admirably observant! I notice stuff on the edges of vision that nobody else sees. And this can have its benefits. I often wonder what such disturbed traits the Duggar kids exhibit. Can't believe that they don't have a ton, since they truly live in crazyville.

Yeah, this is kind of how I see him, too. Plus, he's just a lazy, soft, comfort-loving guy who I think at this point probably even sort of knows that he's not got all that much that the world would reward him for and certainly knows that he doesn't have much drive. I just always see him taking the easiest way available to get whatever shallow pleasures are available. And at this point, I don't see a lot of alternative for that quest than going with Boob, who's the only one in Josh's vicinity with some purse strings that might loosen for him if he met some conditions.

So do you think Josh will be back as well? ETA: I must say that, while I really really don't want that to happen, I'll be very interested to see how it plays out if it does. (Not sure I'll like what I might learn, seeing that, but .... very curious nevertheless.)

Ah, but would it be appropriate to your Season of Life?

Yeah, that's kind of what I think, too. Much as they want Duggar ratings, there are some things that are just so blatant that they have to know they'd be hit with a real firestorm.

Man, I'm so torn between being very very interested to see how this unfolds -- which of our assessments of Josh's and Anna's characters pan out and so on -- and sick with fear that it actually will unfold publicly, and even partly on television, when what I most want is for them to be 100 percent off television and off magazine covers for ever and ever and ever.

You'd probably be furious all the time, without actually knowing what you were furious about, and your base-level anxiety would be sky high. That's how I was. Just constantly on edge, and that was in a home with way fewer people than the Duggar house. Not only is there no place or time to be alone, but the non-aloneness involves being watched constantly, too. And that'll drive anybody crazy -- even an extrovert.

Oh, what an awful -- and apt -- point. Depressing to think that they might now be producing another generation of kids that'll be spending the night in random hallways and stairwells of the TTH, with all the lights blazing and maybe a random blanket or pillow clutched to them. No wonder they're all on "Duggar time." There's no such thing as a schedule and probably nobody gets a good night's sleep. And the marrieds won't pull their kids away from that nighttime nightmare because they're so programmed to spend endless hours hanging out in the vast waiting room that their parents call home. If those were my babies, I'd be out of there and home by 7 o'clock. But the Duggar kids are so tightly sewn to their parents' aprons that leaving probably doesn't even occur to them. .

The thing is, when you're born into a family where being together all the time is the rule, this is what you do. It's something that happens way before and below thought to be joined at the hip with somebody. The JInger/Jill Extra Appendage behavior (great coinage, by the way) is exactly what happened in my family. It was just what came naturally because of the programming. Some people people do hate it, though, even though they do it like everyone else, and I wonder whether Jessa wasn't one such, since she seems to have pulled so much away from the one-on-ones with Jinger now and is not looking back. ...Notice that she and Bin are pretty much joined at the hip now, though. So it's still her pattern. They're almost as joined as Jill and Derick, I think. Heck, Ben didn't want to work or go to school during Jessa's pregnancy, and she seemed to approve of that. And I would bet Jessa's nearly as much teh driver of their joined-at-the-hipness as Ben. (Although I expect that when her honeymoon feelings end she'll be very disgruntled if he still wants the togetherness, since I do suspect that togetherness isn't her nature, just her lifelong habit....) I do think there's another possibility for Jana besides the two clear possibilities you mention. Introverts often are among those who hate the joined-at-the-hip stuff, in my experience. So I think it's possible that Jana's another one who hates it. On that scenario, she generally goes along with it, behavior-wise, to avoid rocking the boat, but she doesn't seek it out and she's conscious of her dislike of it but keeps that to herself because not keeping it to herself would cause her trouble. An introvert shoved into an you-must-always-be-together situation may well act antisocial without being antisocial -- since you'd like being around some people if you weren't required to have them tied to you all the time. (in other words, the rather antisocial can come out looking and feeling utterly radically antisocial in one of these force-togetherness situations) Jana kind of reminds me of myself, and that's what I did. It makes you seem dull as dishwater, but there is something going on underneath. (in my case, plans to leave -- in Jana's, maybe just seething annoyance tinged with guilt?).... Of course, she's a Duggar, so the "no, she's just dull as dishwater" may apply.

Maybe instead of going for a renewal (if there's a speck of truth in this "report," which I sort of doubt), Josh should come to grips with the fact that he never seriously vowed anything in the first place. Then he should rethink and decide whether he actually wants to take them, since he clearly didn't think that through the first time. Also -- kind of insulting to ask Anna to retake the vows, too. She took hers seriously, dude. If you want a revow, you stand up by yourself and make yours seriously and let her sit there and decide whether she wants to continue with her original vows or not, now that she's learned you had your fingers crossed the first time.

Yeah, I feel that way, too. She makes the chocolate fruit and such, which is way way more enterprise than any Duggar ever shows. At the same time, though, I expect that her driving purpose is trying to prospect for some kind of media fame or media job using the Duggars as her stepladder. Because otherwise why the heck would anyone hang around them? And she's said that she had strong media ambitions as a young kid. But I don't think it's going to work. Amy's worked the trying-for-a-Duggar-spinoff for years already and has fallen flat. So I'm thinking Sierra's going to be in the same boat. Although I guess if she gets lucky on multiples, she has a shot at equaling or surpassing Michelle in the baby race a decade or so down the line, so there's always that for hope.

The list of the professions that this gang of untrained, uneducated, unemployed idiots think that they practice just never stops growing, does it?

Well, I guess that would at least show that they have the ability to learn something. With Duggars, that's pretty much always in doubt, i think.

Perfect.

And I think just the persistent hanging around the Duggars means that she wants attention. Because, seriously, how much fun -- how enlightening, how interesting, how rewarding, how pleasant -- can it possibly be to hang around the Duggars all the time? They're boring, preachy, loud, ungenerous, self-righteous, dirty, greedy, stupid, ignorant, passive aggressive, and their food and "entertainment" both stink. I doubt there's a single reason to hang around the Duggars at all except to get media attention.

It always makes me wonder whether they're too dumb to play in any way except "stiff armed overcharged robot" or whether the pounding is their way of getting some frustrations out or what. I wouldn't enjoy playing that way at all.

Good point. And this was the 80s, when huge credit card debt wasn't all that much of a thing for anybody. Today it might be a little more feasible, but not in the 80s. And what big-ticket items do backwoods teens buy other than cars? And I don't think they were putting those on credit cards.

Tsk tsk. Don't you know by now? The words "just' or "only" apply to nothing related to the Duggars. They take themselves far too seriously for that. Well, except for serial child molestation. That's a "just' and "only" situation.

If they had a congregation. Poor kids see nothing but dead ends in all directions.

Oh, yeah, I know people can get into drugs quite quickly and move on quite young to very hard drugs. I've known more than a few people who've done it! I guess I just misunderstood her blog post (which I must say I skimmed pretty quickly). I thought she said in there that she didn't get into drugs until sometime during the very brief period she spent in college (a year or even less?) .and that she stopped taking drugs completely during the same short period... And that seemed like an awfully short time to go from 0 to 80 and then back to 0 again, which is what my too-quick skim read her as saying! But since you're indicating that I'm a sloppy reader (and I was!) and she didn't say that at all, then, yeah, if we're talking the whole span of years from 13 to 18 or even 16 to 18, she can have taken a whole spectrum of drugs.

Wonder whether she might just have had and has a massive soft spot for her baby boy, nutso and awful as he is. lol

Oh, heavens no. I didn't say he was going to succeed. He has neither the brains nor the personality nor, perhaps, the larceny in his soul to get himself a church. I was just responding to the idea that his wanna-be "cool" clothing might be at odds with his grumpy Victorian Calvinism. And Mars Hill was Calvinist and had its Victorian elements, too, such as their views of women, but with a major side of rock music and hipster stuff. So a millennial-appealing style certainly can go along with fire-and-brimstone theology underneath. But luckily Ben's just a little dumb guy who'll never start a big rotten megachurch or grifting teevee ministry. So for that we should all be thankful (even Ben, although I suppose he'll never realize it.)

Thus Cynthia and Lydia Jeub. And while it's not education in the same sense, I hypothesize that the no-birth-certificate-for-you! Penningtons may have unleashed something similar with their runner -- Alecia Faith -- when her mother encouraged her to be artistic and creative. The crazy mother is artsy, too, but I doubt that she realized that encouraging a kid's creativity in arts, crafts and fashion might also build her confidence in her own ideas and desires about other things as well, so that she wouldn't just be content to stay home and make jewelry without a birth certificate, a drivers' license, a place of her own and a chance to go to school. Opening any mental door can show at least some kids that there's something beyond the four walls, it's nice to know. Jim Bob and Michelle, who themselves seem interested in nothing except money and control, will not be lured into making these mistakes, unfortunately.

The existence of Deanna -- and stuff like JB's dad's obituary, which seems to show that some other people in the family actually liked the guy -- is why I would bet that JIm Bob is largely a case of somebody who wasn't really warped by his upbringing, as we seem to want to think -- but was mainly just born with an outlier personality that would have been super-hard or maybe impossible for just about any family to mold into something much better or closer to average. And while it's super-hard to rein an outlier in, I think it's pretty easy to help them turn their extreme personalities into something even more extreme -- If you try to head off explosive anger from a control-freak type by placating them, for example...Well, you may just be teaching them how to better manipulate people. (Full disclosure: I base this on my own family, where the top-dog, super-mean, manipulative control freak was that way literally from birth and had a personality that didn't seem to resemble that of anybody else in the family. So I feel as if I know for a fact that we're just as much a product of our given biological natures as we are of stuff that happens to us as children. Some of us are just out there. And I'm so appalled by Jim Bob (and he reminds me so much of someone I know) that I think he's one of those!) Again, of course, uninformed idle speculation. I would love to hear some stories about the young JB and his family.

Wonder if it's possible that they were somewhat average and normal while Jim Bob was such a strange kid that they just couldn't communicate with him and didn't know how to handle him, leaving the whole family as kind of a hash. I kind of envision him as possibly being, from childhood, a troubling combination of major social bumbler, dweeb and outcast and control-freaky, arrogant self-righteous would-be ubermensch. (well, okay, because that's what he is now...) Anyway, an arrogant control-freak kid who casts aspersions on his parents' inadequate faith and morals while also being a social misfit whom those same parents feel drawn to protect would be hard to deal with. Okay, there's some more ignorance-based idle speculation. Like Wellfleet, I'd love it if someone with a little actual information would chime in!