Churchhoney

So sad that you're probably right! (or else the Chik-Fil-A conjecture is the right one ....!)

I would like to think that this is because it's occurred to Ben that he doesn't have a job. Nor any prospect of getting one. Looking somber because a sense of responsibility just kicked in would probably be a good thing, at this point. ... Not that it would help him much as part of the Duggar clan and a person with a very JimBoob-like headship.

And Swanson and his ilk are absolutely convinced that they should be running the whole world.

This is why I believe the Duggars are just massive control freaks, not "religious" or anything else. When people are total control freaks, they simply do not recognize the adulthood or agency of their children. Period. Children are among the people you own, and the people you own are puppets, nothing else. Plus, you manipulate these children their whole lives so that many if not all of them accept this treatment to at least some degree.

Little Spurgeon is going to be saying that when he's 90.

I wonder whether the most difficult thing when it comes to Josh's "addictions" -- not sure that he actually has anything that fits that name, but his problems anyway... -- might be that when it comes to advising him to take a straighter and narrower path, abide by rules and so on, you'd run headlong into what I think is probably the huge buried issue. The traditions and beliefs from which come the rules he'd be asked to abide by are things to which he has given and, probably, still does give massive lip service, but they're actually dead and empty and maybe even hateful to him now. I expect that the "faith" that was supposed to give his life meaning -- even to having it supposedly inform his "political" job -- doesn't give him any meaning at all or connect him meaningfully to anyone today. I think he's probably quite anchorless and rudderless, with no idea at all where he can find actual meaning in his life, and for a straightening-up regime to have the desired effect, I think it has to address that kind of existential drift. And that's especially hard to do when you're dealing with somebody who either has to re-embrace something he doesn't believe, down underneath, or else cut himself loose from everything he's known and find some new set of beliefs to help order his life and give it meaning. Josh being a Duggar, I expect that the path he'll try to take will be the seemingly easier but ultimately hypocritical one of re-embracing his parents' "faith" (or whatever the hell that is) and following all the RU-type "biblical" rules (at least ostensibly). But since I'm sure that Josh's "belief" in all of that is just a sham at this point (or maybe always was), I expect that any "help" or "cure" he'd get from doing that would be at best temporary. Eventually -- and maybe sooner rather than later -- he'll find himself lacking any real anchor or rudder once again, and he'll just drift back into his usual patterns. I think that without addressing what's probably a vast sense of emptiness inside him by helping him find some real meaning in life for himself, no treatment regimen is going to be successful. But finding meaning is hard work and would also demand that he openly question things that his parents -- read: his cash cow -- don't want questioned. And I'm pretty sure that Josh is a lazy, cowardly Duggar who's very unlikely to work hard or truly rock the boat. Honestly, I don't think there's any help for him, if we're talking about true, deep change into somebody very steady and grounded and positive. At RU or any other place. I think he's just in for a life of drift, full of lip service to conservative Christianity, perhaps with occasional forays into something that shocks them, like adultery. But of course that makes him just like millions of other people. ....

Of course, in their tiny but incredibly arrogant and deluded minds, nothing is "real" except their particular brand of it. .... So for the Duggars what we think of as real rehab is just like real school, real labor-and-delivery care, real science -- lame, Satan-infested twaddle that they are so blessed and precious and special to know better than.

Oh, well. I guess it's better than his previous title: Pregnant Woman's Stay at Home Husband.

Oh, look. They're all wearing Michelle's shirts.

There's a dead leaf in my front yard that's more creative than Ben and Jessa.

Because you are a) very stupid or b) totally making it up. I could go either way on interpreting this one. Bigger liar? Bigger idiot? Dunno.

The more I think about this name, the more I wonder whether Bin really is a full-time stoner. Naming your firstborn "Spurgeon" so has that "Heavy, man. That is deep. And profound." ring to it.

Definitely Hells Angels. And he's changing his name to Satan. Mark my words. Satan SpurgeonMyAss Seewald

Yes. And, notably LM Montgomery was using that name for a laugh line a century ago.

Oh, my gosh. I'm shocked. It's almost as if they've been reading. (although I'm sure they haven't, except sermons that they don't understand). Anybody remember the kid in Anne of Green Gables named Moody Spurgeon Macpherson? He was certainly named after Charles Spurgeon and, probably, Moody of the Bible Institute. He became a Presbyterian minister and his name was kind of a joke through every book of the series he appeared in. Lucy Maud Montgomery clearly knew that you could get a laugh every time just by mentioning a kid named Moody Spurgeon. I still like Resurrection Special Seewald. (and his father -- Bin "My Pretension and Lack of Judgment Know No Bounds" Seewald)

Yeah, I'm of two minds about this. For the kids' sake, probably yeah. But when I think of everything Anna's going through, the idea of her being Jim Bob and Michelle's slave in any way makes me sick. And "teaching" that school can't be a picnic, since at least some of the kids have to have picked up their parents' strong attitude of contempt for education. So I keep thinking of poor old Anna, who has to be in a severe state of ego depletion, stuck doing her horrible in-laws' job, in a situation that they've inevitably poisoned and made even harder than it should be. And teaching a one-room schoolhouse is gonna be hard in the best of situations, particularly for somebody whose only actual education and "training" seems to have been online instruction in getting preschoolers to sit still for bible studies. And I don't know that anybody in the family has any respect for her, which would also make it harder. REspect for Anna has certainly not been modeled.

Resurrection Special Seewald.

Don't even think that.

I thought she was so looking forward to nursing her kid. The quiet, dark middle of the night is a darned good time for that early bonding, Jessa. You could even have Ben hang out with you, too, if you want to. Or not..... I hope to heck that Jana is not doing the 2 am feedings, because if she is, I think that's bad for everybody. And, of course, with Jana and Michelle hanging out at the Seewalds, I guess Jinger and Joy are stuck doing all the other work over at TTH. Like feeding infant JIm Bob on demand, feeding the rest of that crowd, running their massive school. Good grief. (and please, if Anna's "helping out" with all of this, I don't want to know .... She's got four young kids of her own, including an infant, and is coping with a pretty much total life ruin perpetrated by her husband ... ) Man. Them that has crap just gets more crap, in Duggarland.

I think that's what they're saying. .... But then they say other things about this venture in other places, so I'm not 100 percent sure. I think the B.S. learning disability is a very good thing to have! What I really don't understand is how these defenders, who clearly share a lot of Gothard's purported specific beliefs, can not see how much he damages the creed they hold to, with pretty much every thing he says.

We can stick with the towel theme and add the evangelist theme in with Cotton Mather Seewald.

Wow. Massively egotistical and self-righteous much? I'd add that she's a baldfaced liar, but I expect she doesn't Google herself anymore. Since Googling is going to bring up quite a bit of material that runs directly contrary to her golden opinion of her holy self. What a bitch. Not to mention what an idiot. Enjoy your slow painful fall into the horrible life you're going to end up having, you ignorant, arrogant ass. You're just like your evil, disgusting father. I feel sorry for her kid. And maybe even for stupid Bin. But not too much, in his case.

Spent some time perusing the defense site. (I wanted my hair to stand on end for a Bride of Frankenstein costume.) Makes clear how the Gothard tradition helped the Duggs recast Joshie's teen doings as "light inappropriate touching over clothes." "Discovering Grace" recasts Gothard's horrible forced footsie games with trapped, unwilling teenage girls as "affirmative taps on the feet" made during counseling sessions to bolster the girls' confidence and spirits. They sure had that effect, all right. And they keep repeating "affirmative taps on the feet" as if that's a thing. Which I suppose it might be if they're done with a stick and you're teaching Jocko the Wonder Horse to count or something. I have no idea how adults can convolute their brains this way in the service of undead horror like Gothard.

Well, some of us do just have yellow teeth by nature. I do. They've been yellow my whole life. I take after my grandfather, who also had yellow teeth. But, in some cases, the yellow seems to correlate with exceptional strength. Neither he nor I ever had a cavity -- we had the kind of baby teeth that had to be pulled to get out of the way of the main teeth. .Strong teeth, strong roots. I've always been happy to take the yellow because I got the strength too. ... Now whether all yellow-toothed people are so lucky, I don't know. Probably not.

No, no. It just brings you more quickly to Jesus. Of course the college campus thing cuts two ways. It may relate to intelligence. But it definitely relates to many people being searching and confused at that period, and many also being lonely and without their usual rudders for the first time.