Churchhoney

Well, I truly think that it's so simple that they can't even imagine why they would need to do it. They are the missionaries. This is not a "helping" mission but a proselytizing mission, so no money except maybe a few bucks for souvenir baubles or cheap bibles is going to locals. Virtually all the money, maybe 99 percent -- is going to the missionaries' salaries. And because the very being of the missionaries constitutes the mission -- by existing and being visible to other humans, they are carrying Jesus's message -- time, too, is simple to account for. Because their very existence constitutes proselytizing, then 100 percent of their waking time is spent advancing the mission. If they're at the supermarket or on the beach, their Christianity is still on display to everyone there and can work its powerful influence -- that's their mission and they're doing it whenever they're awake and visible. It's the same thing as Jim Bob and Michelle have always said. They didn't say that part of their show in which they discussed certain topics or demonstrated certain behaviors was the mission. They said that all of it was the mission. Just the sight of them doing whatever -- from getting their teeth fixed to licking a counter -- constituted the Duggar mission. Same for the Dillards, I expect. Seriously. I think it's that simple. When you pay, you're paying the Duggars for being an incredibly value mission for Christ in every hour of every one of their days. Exactly. That's the whole nature of religion, seems to me. Of course, maybe they're not reporting the money because they've brought in so little that they're afraid the facts would discourage other potential donors. Everybody loves to give to a winner.

Well, exactly. They don't know what the hell they're talking about. But they're extremely sure that they do. I doubt that Gothard plays into it much. That's too complicated and it wouldn't encompass most of the tourist "missionaries" who show up, so I expect they go with a very generalized version of fundie Protestantism and that Derick directs the theology end. Given the sort of stuff he writes, I expect they're going with the most simplistic possible version of what Derick fuzzily understands and remembers about whatever he grew up with. I expect it boils down to something pretty simple -- faith not works, Pope is bad, Catholics worship Mary and they shouldn't, Jesus is coming back for a thousand-year reign but he won't unless we convert most everybody to fundie Protestantism first, etc. I doubt that they even realize that Ben's cracked Calvinism is, strictly, different. And they know it's right because Jesus told them.

You'd probably have to start by explaining that Austria and Germany are countries, not cities, or plants or animals. And that they're overseas.

I guess. I don't really see UP going this far out on a limb to get them, though, Stephen Collins or no. It would screw the Bateses. Plus, given all the press the Duggars have gotten for being too tainted for Discovery to air them, seems to me it'd be a pretty huge gamble for UP. Wonder if they'd risk having their image take a potential media beating for picking up such a property? I suppose a lot of their viewers might not care. And it certainly would boost their ratings. ... Well, interesting possibility, anyway. I guess we'll see.

They could. But, really, how may nonprofit organizations that you donate to actually give all this precise information to donors? Some do but most absolutely don't, as far as I can tell. If they did, we wouldn't need the websites that display all the organizations' tax forms. And even in the tax forms, the information isn't this detailed. .... So, yeah, this would be the ethical thing to do. But if we're expecting Duggars to be more ethical than most other people, then we're probably barking up the wrong tree.

I agree with you, except that I think that in addition to being worried about eternal fire, Josh may also be worried about having access to adequate cash during his earthly existence. I would bet that, like most of the Duggars, he has pretty much zero work ethic and no energy (together with no education or training and not much of a resume) and may be as scared to let go of Jim Bob's teat of support -- for him and the wife and four kids he'd likely be stuck supporting forever, even in the case of a divorce, if he left the Duggar fold -- as he is of being damned. Fear of work, fear of poverty, and fear of hellfire all combined are a pretty powerful incentive to remain in place, I would guess.

I think it's perfectly normal. After all, if donations didn't pay missionaries' salaries, who the heck would? And if nobody paid their salaries, most missionaries would starve to death. I'll bet about 90 percent of the supposed outcry over the Dillard donations is coming from people who never gave J and D a dime but who just can't stand them or who strenuously object to their conception of mission work. And the rest has to come from people who gave them money because they see them as cute celebrities but who don't understand anything about the brand of mission they would participate in. A lot of us have trouble with the brand of mission work that J and D do, but most of us wouldn't give them money to do it. If you want to, you really have to do it because you're a believer in the exact same Christian creed that J and D have, because the entire point of their mission is to inform the world about that creed. What happened because of their celebrity, though, is that other people -- who thought of missions in terms of providing tangible assistance such as medical care or irrigation systems or something -- may have given money and then are shocked when it never even crosses the D's minds that the money would go to anything but them and their living expenses. But, really, their collection of money is no different from money collection to support Latter Day Saints missionaries. Collections for that have to come from within the LDS community only, since the entire point of the missions is to spread the word about the true faith. So should it have been with the Dillards. But it wasn't. .... I think that's what they should have been transparent about when they asked for donations. However, I suppose they take it so much for granted that proselytizing is so clearly what true missionary work is that it never would have occurred to them to explain it. (and, of course, if I want to be cynical, I might say that they knew that not being transparent would bring in more cash .... Not sure that much cynicism is warranted, though.... I think they may have just thought that everybody knew what their mission work would consist of and, therefore, where the money would go.) I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's trying to do this. But when it comes to working a deal, I don't see what Boob's bargaining chip could possibly be. What in the world could he possibly offer Discovery at this point to cause them to make such a concession? (the only thing I can come up with would be his having solid proof that they knew all the details of the Josh affair all along and therefore covered it up as much as the Duggars did .... kinda don't think he could have actual proof of that, though...)

If this comes true, I fear for Mr. Bynum's health. There are only so many times you can beat your head against a wall without doing serious damage. I'll bet the Duggar language-learning schedule is more like 9 minutes a day for 5 days a month (alternate months only). Plus, it's undertaken without knowing anything else, including English.

It is. And since the actual answer was "Give her eleventy-seven children and make them all sing together in public" they could have used it at a Duggar wedding. Although I guess you wouldn't want to a call a Duggar daughter a cloud you can't pin down. Might give them ideas. Could've worked for Jessa, though.

Yeah, I agree. I think they'd probably actually planned a spinoff with Jessa and Jill or at least something like the specials you mention. And then evil Joshie killed it -- an action far worse than his child molestation to hear the Duggars, including some of the molested ones, tell it.

You're scaring me! Hoping what I would think would be higher expenses would scare them! (...or maybe just wishful thinking on my part....argh) See, I think that was really about courtships/marriages and, especially, WEDDINGS!!! Seems to me that tv scheduling provides plenty of examples that these things are the ratings draw, not continuing stories about young married couples with a kid or two, no matter how exotic their location. And a Jill-does-missions spin-off won't have any courting/dating, romantic engagement, wedding planning, wedding stuff in it. I don't think Jill's ministry is midwifing. I think it's holding Izzy while shooting cellphone video at the same time.

I have a feeling that when it comes to godly missions and, in fact, anything that Duggars and pseudo-Duggar D Dillard is involved in, all rules, logic and bets are off. As far as the missionary money goes, though, I think they just thought/think that it's perfectly obvious that the money goes to them, the missionaries. Their mission is not about any services or donations they deliver. It's about their mere existence on the ground in a place where people are in need of saving. In their eyes, the world's highest need is for everyone to believe in the exact version of Christianity that they believe in. And the way to make that happen is just to have true believers like Jill and Derick hang around in the neighborhood until the locals get the right idea. So, on their interpretation, I think they believe they're being perfectly transparent. It's the Dillard Family Mission -- and, clearly, the money goes to support the Dillard Family. And money that goes to a family supports that family's activities, feeds them, clothes them, pays their airfare and so on. What could be clearer and more transparent? This makes no sense to many people. But it's clearly the idea behind 19 Kids. JB and M said over and over that their mere existence on tv constituted a great Christian mission. They're the true believers in the only true belief, and when the audience watches them go about their daily lives and listens to them describe what they do, it's then possible for the audience to emulate them. And emulating the Duggars is the world's biggest need, in the eyes of Christ. Their continued run on tv proved to them that this was true, I expect. So it certainly rubbed off on a dumb favorite child like Jilly Muffin. It's more surprising that Derick would buy into this view, but the fact that he does just makes clear that he, too, has enough ego and sloth in him to entirely crowd out brains. Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I'm certain that that's what was coming before the great bust-up. But if it's coming now --- Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!) I'm skeptical, though. TLC is craven, but they do know something about putting together freakshow reality tv. Do you think they'd really see a single family of three (or three-plus) as providing enough material for a show? Especially because a lot of the people around them won't speak much or any English, and the family's own activities seem to have a limited range, too. Seems like doing a show would be a lot more difficult with a changing cast of background characters from whom you'd have to keep getting permissions to shoot and show them, as well. If this is in the works, though, I can only say Nooooooooooo!!!!!

When you figure it out, tell us so I can click on it, too. I keep getting ads for plus-size clothing.

And it looks just as phony and ridiculous the second time as it does the first. Your acting does not improve with practice, Famy. Please look carefully at these pictures before discarding them and vow never to make this stupid face again.

Cause boys are people, who use things. But girls are things that get used.

Great great suggestion. We can always send the video to a few reporters to kind of nudge that along. : )

Yep, that's my guess, too. If they were doing anything else, there'd be photos. I honestly think they believe that they, and their "cause," are so godly, that mere contact with its devotees is enough to change the hearts of many a heathen, Catholic or otherwise. I'm sure that's what all the Duggars thought on their family "mission trips" to hand out nail polish. Seems astonishing. But when you pretty literally know nothing at all, I expect you can develop some amazing fantasies, especially when those fantasies involve you having lots of fun (and feeling very very superior) without paying a dime.

I wonder, though. Something tells me that most of the people complaining either never actually did donate to SOS at all and just find the whole idea outrageous or had never donated to SOS before Jill and Derick's plea and did so only because of the Duggars. Surely the group's regular donors all know that its main function is to bring U.S. fundies to Central America to paint nails, perform skits and visit another country with a group of like-minded Christians? I would expect that its regular donors are mostly people who've gone on these trips or have friends, family or fellow church members who've gone on the trips or hope to in the future. And it kind of looks to me as if the idea of "missions" like this is actually growing. I certainly hear about them much more than I ever did in the past, at any rate. I'm sure the publicity won't increase donations to SOS, which I'm sure is what they were hoping. But I'm not convinced that the flap would cause any actual drop-off. There are plenty of places to donate to that tell you what kind of help to locals your money will help provide, so I think it's unlikely that SOS had many -- or any -- former donors who didn't understand the kinds of "mission" they conduct. And if you supported that kind of mission before, I don't know why you'd stop supporting it now, really.

I think it pretty much is L.Ron Hubbard without the showbiz connections. Both cults were set up -- and, I have to say, pretty cleverly so -- to enrich the guys that started them (and their families) by presenting systems that appealed to many people because they seemed to be fairly clear and simple sets of rules that would guarantee a great life. But both have major flaws that limit the length of their successful tenures, and the flaws are kind of the opposite of each other, I think. With Hubbard, a problem for long-term continuation is that Scientology has actively discouraged members from having many kids or any kids and limits parents' relationships with their kids. But that meant that pretty quickly it stopped getting a big membership boost from people born into the group. And it's harder to bring in people from outside than it is to bring up brainwashed children. Then Gothard went the opposite way -- encouraging followers to have a million kids. And that increased the IBLP membership numbers quite well for a while, but it also meant that most members didn't have much money, so few could effectively perform the cult-sustaining function of pouring in cash. As I've said before, though, I'm not convinced that Bill and Ron didn't realize these things would happen but didn't care because their schemes would run long enough to ensure they had plenty of cash and adulation during their lifetimes. I think it's possible that neither one actually believed in the system he invented and that both conceived of them solely as clever financial scams that could set them, personally, up for life. I suppose that's probably too cynical. But I do think it's possible. .... Or, alternatively, they're both just nuts.

When it comes to the money, I would think they assumed that people understood that its main use would be to pay their salaries. After all, they're the missionaries. And when you pay people's salaries, you don't get any say in how they spend them. I know we all think that they have other money and that they should probably mainly be living on that and directing the donations to helping out the locals in some tangible sense. And I'm sure a lot of people wonder why Jill would get a salary from the missionary work at all at this point, since she doesn't seem to do anything except follow Derick around with a cellphone camera and carry Izzy. But I'm sure that's not the way they see it. In their view, they're missionaries doing incredibly valuable work and people who donate to them are supporting the missionaries and thus making it possible for them to do that work. Their view of missions isn't about bringing vaccination clinics or installing good wells or whatever. It's having missionaries on the spot who know what Christianity really is and who will tell people about that and thus save those people and the planet for the Lord for all eternity. I expect they consider the other forms of missionary help trivial and beside the point. After all, if you don't die of thirst or cholera but end up living to a ripe old age, you're still going to spend eternity burning in hell if you have the wrong view of Christianity. And, worse, they likely believe that if the whole world isn't converted to the right view of Christianity, Christ can't come back and start the thousand-year reign of glory that will bring everybody who's saved into heaven for all eternity. Jill, in particular, is so steeped in the idea that the Duggar way and the Duggar family are an integral part of the Lord's most important work on earth, that I expect she'd be shocked to learn that anyone would feel that returning to the Duggar home regularly could possibly be seen as an unworthy use of her missionary's salary. I don't think there has to be anything nefarious about their use of the money. Just a tremendous clash of world views. I do have sort of a hard time seeing that college-educated Derick thinks this way. But then I remember that Derick wanted Jim Bob Duggar as a prayer partner the last time he was a missionary, and college-educated Gil and Kelly Bates are devoted Gothardites.

Yeah, I agree. With all the Duggar kids, it's really hard to tell how they might behave differently if their perceptions of pretty much everything hadn't been warped in horrible ways from the very beginning. In that regard, I don't think the Josh situation is very different from the whole Jill-missionary flap that's going on. I find I can't really conclude much at all about the kids' ethics or levels of psychological warpedness or whatever because the basic ideas that were continually drummed into their heads from day one about things like sex and religion and money were just so so so so so messed up. The bases that they start from are just dead wrong in so many ways that it's hard to see what's at the root of their odd behavior as adults.

Moving or downsized, I'd guess, right? And I guess I'd assume moving would be the first option. .... But the downsized may not be far behind ....According to that Talking Points Memo article from last week, the take has dropped off very very steeply. And no reason to figure it won't continue to drop, I would think. Nice to have actual evidence that you really can't sustain these cults for all that long. A certain amount of sexual abuse by two top leaders, your brother scamming cult members for money, and several decades of people's real-world experience of the whole thing not working very well, and you're pretty much done for. I like a logical outcome!

I'm willing to put this remedy into Jim Bob's plus column. It's only fair. And his minus column is so long for me that it would take enturies of additional pluses for the two to balance out (and I don't think too many additional pluses will appear).. ;- )

So that either a child could use that bathroom easily, or an older person could use that bathroom easily. .... No different from installing a separate bathtub and separate shower in a bathroom. You're not anticipating two people using the shower and the bath simultaneously. They're simply both there so that the room is multifunctional. If the argument that keeps being made about the child's and adult's toilets in the same room were extended to the very common arrangement in which you've got a standalone tub and standalone shower in the same room, you'd be assuming that two people were supposed to use those two facilities simultaneously. Obviously, they're not. And neither are the two different kinds of people who can use those two different kinds of toilets. A bathroom with only a child's toilet in it is a bathroom that can't be accessed at all by the older members of the family for elimination purposes. In a house with a limited number of bathrooms (like every house outside of certain high-dollar zip codes in LA and Long Island), why would you ever want to make one of the bathrooms so non-functional for most of the family?

No. Nothing with a beat. It's more difficult that way, but hey, Jessa's up to the job.