Churchhoney

I'm still trying to figure out why anyone designed that dress. What a horrible thing to unleash onto an unsuspecting world.

Grinding her teeth and muttering shrilly, "If the gay-liberal mafia hadn't worked so hard to take down the Duggars, traditional marriage in our nation would not be suffering this horrible blow!"

Yeah to this. And, you know, Josh had (has) to be a person whose insides are just split up and compartmentalized in so many ways. He had to have swallowed a lot of the Duggar belief and guilt and so on, and at the same time he had his various sex drives and his arrogance and on and on. And both because of the belief in "just pray it away" and their lack of respect for the intellect and his own arrogance and jerkiness -- and just being a young dumb horny man -- you know he'd never really spent a minute in his life truly trying to grapple with what he actually does believe, feel, want. The pressure of having so many kids so young -- and kids that he really did seem to like -- would just have worsened a tendency to try to block everything out and just do what he wanted, I think. ... Much as I'd like to slug Josh numerous times, it really can't be easy to be him, and being under intense pressures often just makes us act like even worse jerks because it's a way of denying that the pressure even exists. What a mess. And given the Duggar family ethos and belief system, a mess that none of them may ever really emerge from. Those poor little kids.

Ah, the "source" again. Hi, Amy! I think this is one of those places where the not-believing-in-therapy-because-I-rely-on-Jesus thing really bites you in the ass.

Well, the little article that I saw and cited said that some people get as little as $100 a month. It depends on all the details of the tower's location, the company it's for and the whole complex process of siting it and constructing it. .... That being the case, I would bet that most rural towers in non-high-rent districts don't bring in all that much, since there's probably much more land available on which to situate the thing, constraints on the construction would probably be fewer, and the company's take from the tower would probably be less. I'm sure the big bucks go to towers in densely populated places with complex geographies. That's not Jim Bob's area.

Or maybe he was looking so hard at the extra thousands a second daughter's-wedding special would bring in -- and a potential boost in ratings to follow the newlyweds -- that nothing else even rose to the level of consideration in his tiny, money-and-fame-obsessed pinhead? He's a shallow shallow man. And selfish and stupid. Wouldn't surprise me at all if the scent of a few extra tens of thousands was many times more important to him than the personal future of his daughter and her children.

I think this sentence is pretty much the Duggars in a nutshell. Or a nutchelle.

Or "daddy likes the curls" because Bill Gothard likes the long curls and has therefore declared that long curls are what make woman's hair her "crowning glory" as decreed by The Lord. And that makes Bill Gothard's and daddy's sex drives holy...and biblical. Could go either way. Or both.

As Jill would say, "Totally.'

Maybe. I tend to think it's different for actresses because of the Hollywood fame and Hollywood stories she has to tell, the network exposure to a mainstream audience and the better oratory and personal-presentation skills and so on. But I guess we'll see. I'm sure Jessa will give it a shot. ETA: I don't know, though. Was just thinking about Whelchel. And in addition to what I mentioned above, she still is in show business -- so continued visibility outside of speaking. And she radiates some vulnerability and warmth, which I honestly think are crucial to being a public success for virtually everyone. .... I have a hard time seeing Jessa develop the sort of oratorical abilities or personality that get people to call you again and again because they want to see you, rather than calling you once because they want to gawk at your famous self. http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20651783,00.html

According to this random source I just Googled up, cell phone tower takings are all over the map. Didn't see any as high as your guy reported but if this is accurate they certainly range from virtually nothing to very nice checks. And what you get is just luck of your draw. So maybe JB's been lucky again on this. http://www.cell-tower-leases.com/Cell-Tower-Lease-Rates.html

Wow. I just took a look. That's pretty stunning. Maybe the end really is nigh!

Well, that's the Dullard's church and the Duggars haven't frequented it in the past -- only went there this past week because the Dullards were going to show up on the altar, I think. And that guy scheduled and announced his sex series as a fall membership drive kickoff for these weeks months ago. So it's not like his Sunday subjects are surprising anybody or were created for the purpose of lecturing Josh or Anna. There's no real reason why the Duggars had to show up at that church this past Sunday -- and I don't think there's any evidence that they attended any of the earlier sermons in the series -- and they certainly didn't have to drag Anna and she didn't have to go. I don't see why ministers who don't have the Duggars in their congregation have to censor what they talk about or alter long-made plans on the chance that the Duggs will drop by dragging their daughter-in-law. Hundreds of other people who actually belong to the church may have actually wanted to hear the sermon. Anna, JB and Michelle are adults attending a long-ago-announced sermon on a topic they may find sensitive. In my opinion, they're responsible if they have a problem with it. Nobody put guns to their heads to force them to attend a church they're not members of. I think the minister would be a jerk to cancel a sermon series he announced to a whole congregation to potentially save the tender feelings of some random adult non-member who might possibly show up.

I truly think he did believe the show would go on forever. Besides being pride personified, he's uninformed and really not too bright.

Aaaaa.... My sense is that there's no way in hell that would happen. FRC only hired Josh because of the reality-show fame. That's now evaporated, and Ben doesn't have the name. If Josh hadn't had the right name and still been on television there's no way a political organization like FRC would hire an uneducated idiot. Ben is almost as uneducated as Josh and is certainly an idiot. Just because his community-college degree says political science on it doesn't mean he knows anything or has any kind of credential that these people would respect or see as useful. There aren't such groups of any size in the hinterlands and any group in the DC area has dozens if not hundreds of college students and new college grads from top schools around the country vying for unpaid intern positions to do everything Ben would be capable of doing and much more. There's really no "entry level" in these organizations. You can't come in as some kind of semi-untutored analyst or writer or whatever and work your way up. Interns do the entry-level stuff and everybody else is a professional. Josh was a fronting face with a big name that was very visible on television, especially to a demographic they'd been having a hard time reaching. And Josh is even somewhat more adept at presenting and speaking than Ben is (that's not saying much, of course, but it's true.). Plus, the only fame connection Ben has is to the Duggars, and I doubt that too many groups now feel comfortable announcing a connection to the Duggars, even when they're talking to the fundiest of fundies. Who knows how many of the fundiest have themselves turned aside from Duggar-admiration? Once burned on the Duggars, twice shy, I expect. Is he really going to pay the bills for their children? Seems to me he's way too much of a skinflint for that. And originally he said that the house gifts were just for the first year or so. Is he really going to give Jessa a house in perpetuity, even though he may now not have much in the way of houses left to give to any other kids who marry? And if he does give the other kids houses, too, is he going to support their kids also, while they pay only the utility bills? I'm having a hard time understanding the economics that would allow all these people to get along for years and years, and produce more children, without anybody working actual jobs of some kind. ...

Wonder how long those are going to last, though. Reality-tv fame can be pretty fleeting. And there won't be another set of shows in their future.

The thing is, I wonder whether he'd even notice. I suspect that, like Jim Bob, he just blunderbusses along, getting his, and without noticing her much at all. And this is a Gothard marriage. So if Josh doesn't notice, it didn't matter. Heck, it didn't even happen.

Note to Jessa and Ben: If the only housing bill you can afford to pay is your utilities, it's time to think about preparing for and getting a job. If the rest of us can't afford to pay more than our utility bill, we have to live in our cars.

Seems to be a knee in that photo. (or is the baby just hiking her dress up?)

He would have. But he couldn't find one where the numbers went up to 19. For some reason, they kept stopping at 12. Ah, another groom in brown shoes. ... A new JIm Bob in the making? ETA: Also, "press": Stop saying that Amy's "rebelling" against the Duggar clan traditions. Cousin Oliver is not a member of the damn Duggar clan.

Oh, thank you. That was driving me nuts. Should have thought of a sash -- but, wow, it does look like her skin to me.... And I suppose that I sort of thought Amy's taste might lead her to a wedding gown with a mesh midriff! (I can see someone designing one on Project Runway.)

Yes, setting aside the vibrator and/or imagination, even the army of cats would require moving out of the TTH. Nine lives aren't enough on the Duggar property. Poor woman might as well live in a medium-sized fish bowl.

You don't really need to ask, right?

I thought about that, but what the heck is it? I can't figure it out. Is it just white in the shadow of the Grand Tetons, or what?

Well, let's hope she has an excellent imagination. Then no vibrator would be necessary. Unfortunately, though, I suppose the Duggar assault on kids' imaginations pretty much extinguished Jana's.