Churchhoney

Yeah, I agree.

You mean you don't think getting Josh Duggar instead of a male model would be a wonderful surprise? Whatever is wrong with you? Josh Duggar is a TEE VEE personality! And a political figure of some note, to boot! C'mon, now.

Plus now we've got those "religious freedom" bills that are part of the whole "persecution of Christians" thing. That's certainly going to get more attention. And of course Ben the toilet cleaner is already on board with that campaign!

Wow, Ronnie Floyd's really looking to expand his empire. Or maybe just the Southern Baptist empire? .... I'm kind of confused about how he really seems to be a personal brander when it comes to his churches but is also the SBC president. But then I say that not knowing anything about how the modern SBC works!

Yeah, I think you're right about the never-officially-Quiverfull thing. I wonder if Jim Bob's political ambitions didn't precede their tv ambitions as a big impetus for not making their links to that movement official. They walked like a duck and quacked like a duck but called themselves a goose, so the always kinda skeery term "Quiverfull" couldn't be attached securely enough to dim Dim Bulb's chances.

Believe it or not, I actually disagree with the idea that we always have a choice! I'm really saying that in some things I believe it's likely impossible for me to make a choice, and that maybe this is true with some things regarding Josh as well. (And, yep, I know that I may just be making excuses for myself! I hope not, but I realize it's a possibility, perhaps a very strong possibility. I used to believe myself that choice was always possible, but as years have gone by, my optimism about the range of choices I'm capable of making or even conceiving of has unfortunately diminished greatly.) Anyway, I totally agree that Josh is not doing nearly enough -- not doing anything? -- to figure out where he does have a choice and trying to amend himself so he can make better choices in whatever ways he can, though! And that he hideously compounds the problem by being gleefully and self-righteously judgmental all the time toward nearly everybody. And he could stop that or at least apologize when he does it, and not seek employment in which doing that is the main criterion listed in the job qualifications. That certainly is within his control. .... One thing I wonder is whether the Duggars as a group will be any less outspoken at all in their bigotry campaigns now that all of this has gone down. I suppose it's kind of an irrelevant question, though, since I would think that many fewer people will be likely to seek Michelle's endorsement for their pro-discrimination legal campaigns now that she's lost her tv "bully" pulpit.

I think they've disavowed that connection more than once. I guess it's the same way they've very seldom mentioned Gothard-related enterprises on the show or in their public rantings, particularly as years have gone by. Both are fact -- and in fact at the heart of their crazy behavior -- but they'd damage their ability to make being Duggarific a true national brand with mainstream appeal. Liars for the sake of the almighty dollar, the lot of them.

Yeah, she did register for a bunch of gift cards and certainly got some. But at one point I understood them to say that they were eating out maybe the majority of days with one 'date night' special eat-out meal a week. And that seemed to go on for months, at least. Surely she couldn't have gotten that many gift cards? And gift cards in such big denominations that they would buy two people more than a meal or two? You may have a better take on this than I do, but I read some things about their eating habits that made me think that they were making awfully heavy use of restaurants. And they never expressed it in terms of -- We splurged tonight! -- either! ... Maybe my own over-anxious-about-how-we'll-eat-two-years-from-now nature is getting the best of me here, though! Thanks for sharing your view. I'm fascinated by the whole question of the relationship between the Duggs and the various media outlets. If we ever get to the real facts, we'd not only learn a lot about our culture but about how much money Duggardom actually has and to what extent they're setting themselves up for grinding poverty five years from now!

Well, I'll go out on a limb with this one, although I don't know whether this applies to Josh. Some of us are just weaker, I think. I've changed a lot of things about myself that probably relate to my upbringing. But I've also concluded that there are a lot of bad things that -- apparently -- I simply cannot change. Not that I won't keep on trying. But I feel as if I'm stuck with some pretty terrible personality and character traits because they're so well baked into the way my brain functions that I express them way before my conscious thought has any time to stop them. I'm sure that plenty of people have changed these very things, but I haven't been able to, and it really hasn't been from lack of wanting to or trying. There are certain patterns I fall into that I eventually recognize as my childhood-derived patterns, but I never ever notice them in time to not do them at all. Being incapable of changing everything I'd like to change is definitely weakness and that's certainly a severe character flaw. But I'm really not convinced that it's one I'll ever be able to conquer and that to a large extent is probably part of my physical makeup and DNA. I do think, even as a fully fledged adult, that, in some ways my fucked-up personality and character were created for me and I wasn't born strong enough to fully alter them. I envy those who can. But I truly feel that I don't have the strength to emulate those people. I realize that many people see that as only an excuse stupid bad behavior and lack of will power. And maybe it is. But it sure doesn't feel that way. I don't know if that's the case with Josh. A lot of my bad stuff is as least as self-harming as it is other-harming -- and virtually none of it is really self-pleasing -- so I am definitely not usually being a jerk, asshole and fool on purpose. A lot of Josh's, by contrast, seems to me to be self-pleasing. So I do think that, to a large degree, he may just be doing what he wants to do because he's quite consciously and happily a selfish idiot. Nevertheless, I think I do recognize a bit of the fellow weakling in him, so I'm still inclined to see him as at least to some degree a product of his upbringing -- combined with a nature that just isn't strong enough to combat that upbringing. That may be the very scariest thing about raising children, to me. I think that every individual does have a nature, just by virtue of how their cells are put together, and how we treat a child will have one effect on one kid but a very different effect on another kid because of those natures. And if we fuck up the upbringing, there may be some kids who just aren't mentally and emotionally capable of extricating themselves from the mess we helped make. As a weak and, I believe, damaged-by-childhood adult myself, that scares the crap out of me, frankly. .... Oddly, it doesn't seem to scare the Duggars a bit, though. .... I guess I'd be happier if, like them, I could blame it on Satan, or our liberal society or something and not on something I might do to a child who was born with a nature that couldn't defend itself. I do think that, until death, everybody, including Josh, has an obligation to keep doing everything we can to remedy our flaws. And I don't really see him having that mindset. So I'm not exactly letting him off the hook. I fear, though, that some of us may just not be capable of fixing ourselves, no matter how hard or long we would try. I feel as if I'm probably one of those, and he might be one, too. So I unfortunately feel a bit of kinship with the little jerk.

Thanks for providing this perspective. On this -- "I don't think that she has enough experience as an independant adult to understand what this has done to her earning potential and how economically serious this is for her nascent family" I'm sure about that, since it seems she doesn't even understand the effect that marrying an unemployed teenager has on her nascent family. Just to name one tiny thing that appalls me about her lack of understanding -- all that eating out that she and Ben were doing early in their marriage (and may be doing still) even as they tried mightily to quickly become parents-to-be. If she'd had any understanding at all of how their financial situation was going to affect them and their children, she would have been madly tending a large vegetable-and-fruit garden and feeding the two of them on homegrown carrots and peanut-butter and baloney sandwiches.

Cripes. How old are they? 10?

Wow. Such an effective way to do ministry work. More like a 21-day, 15-nation tour. Hey, we've spent three whole days in this location, changing people's hearts and lifting up their earthly condition, now it's on to the next country. What commitment. What servant's hearts.

'By creating relationship and courtship rules, teaching the importance of modesty and implementing the the significance of living a life through Christ, Jim Bob and Michelle continue to instill these teachings to their children – both younger and older – to this day. '"Our entire lives, we've worked toward this, prayed about it, and encouraged our children to really just focus on becoming the person that God wants them to be," the couple wrote on their family site. "We've always urged our children to wait for the one that God has for them, and not to make compromises in their life in any way."' How can the frigging hacks at People write this shit without wanting to go out and throw themselves off a cliff? Clearly the Duggars did not "instill" any such teachings into their ridiculous throng. To prove that, we have not only the evidence of Josh but the clear evidence that neither Jessa nor Jill "waited" for "the one that God has for them." Both threw themselves into promising marriage pretty much instantly the first time a male was presented to them -- Jill declaring mad love before she'd ever met the guy that God -- aka Jim Bob -- presented and Jessa committing herself to the pretty much ironclad "courtship leads to marriage" state at a time when she clearly was thinking "ewww" every time she looked at Ben. If she wasn't "compromising" early in that "courtship" I don't know what the hell she was doing. Meanwhile, Josh's recent actions have shown clearly that he "compromised" big time when he took Anna, since he doesn't give a crap for her. And in what way was he "waiting" when as a 14-year-old he entertained himself at night by feeling up whatever girls -- and I do mean girls -- were handy, even if they were his own baby sisters. We know that the Duggars continue to spew all this crap, and always will, but the content and tone of the People-written paragraphs absolutely disgust me. I'd like to see and smack the writers who draw paychecks for producing this bullshit that they have to know is swallowed as inspiring, aspirational truth by some of the leghumping thousands who want to believe the Duggar branding. And the Duggar branding is not just wrong but dangerous to children and other living things.

Great post. And Libby Anne really hit this one out of the park, didn't she?

That's a really great observation. What a lot of crap there is in their haunted little brains. Dumb-asses.

Maybe Jim Bob finds some golden tablets buried out by the cellphone tower that spell out in a mystical language the errors of all present-day ministries. And a couple of Howlers dig up some funny-looking stones that Jim Bob discovers are the translation keys for that language. And, lo, the Word comes to Jim Bob. And he translates the golden tablets, uncovering the new, true ministry of Arkansas Jesus for the 21st century. And he sends out the Howlers into all the land, dressed like a boy band. And they serve as his disciples shooting mediocre Duggar Studio YouTube videos that nevertheless entice impressionable young ladies to abandon the errors of all current cults and churches, even Gothard's, and embrace the new ministry of Duggardumb. And, lo, the Howlers collect coin. It'd probably be worth a shot considering the lack of other alternatives.

I wonder what Josh would think if he knew that practically all of us are skeptical that he actually got any, despite his persistent efforts. Makes me laugh. (Don't feel too bad about laughing, though, since according to the Duggars I'm burning in hell forever even if I bend over backwards to be nice.)

True. Very good point. I wrote unclearly, though. What I meant to say is that I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Josh or any other Duggar had demanded payment for anything at all, even spitting on a sidewalk. Because I get the feeling that that's how entitled -- and greedy for money, desperate for cash -- that Josh in particular but also Duggars in general have become.

I kind of think he would only be interested in sex with women. I suspect sex is a lot about power for Josh and a lot about treating somebody else like an object who isn't capable of independent activity. After all, he thinks there are times that someone would be obliged to have sex with him. I can see him thinking that about any woman, but I can't see him thinking it about a man. Lording stuff over women could be a way for a man like Josh to feel big in a world where he might actually suspect that other men don't see him as that important. I know he's curious about stuff that's hitherto been outside his ken. But I lean toward thinking that sex is more about a feeling of power than about great curiosity and openness to new experiences, for him. Can't help but think that this is a guy who cried when leaving mommy and daddy in Arkansas, when he was already a grown man and a father of children, and who ran home for a couple of weekends every month. That doesn't sound to me like somebody who's actually hungry for all sorts of out there experiences.

Well, what I've gathered from my own family is that some people are just born with a constellation of traits that give them the potential to be bulletproof -- low empathy, high will to power, narcissism and so on. And if you've got a certain combination of traits and are born in the right position -- and first kid often is the right position, it seems -- you can start exercising those traits to achieve success very quickly, and repeatedly, and the success reinforces those traits and encourages you to rely on them. It's a nature-environment perfect storm, I suspect. ... Meanwhile, other people get the perfect storm going the other way.

Well, the 37 million are in many many countries, so that accounts for some of it. And a whole lot of people probably successfully used pseudonyms. (or at least successfully so far) Plus, I think most celebrities don't have to search very hard for people to have affairs with. I'm sure somebody else will turn up, though. Josh was a pretty obvious search target.

"The Duggars had a lot more people and story lines to pursue." And yet it seemed to me as if it had hardly any story lines. .... To have story lines you need to have people who, you know, do something. Something besides getting pregnant and not kissing. And you may also need characters who are different from one another. Instead of a whole slew of people who, in response to any situation, all recite the exact same meaningless lines, over and over and over again for years. I wouldn't be surprised if Josh was asking to be paid for spitting on the sidewalk..... Or any other Duggar either.

Well, he has kind of scrambled away from his crap-filled toilet with his pants around his ankles and fallen on his face in front of everybody. And he is unemployed. "And you wanna be my latex salesman."

The FRC hot-mic pics might be orgasm faces as well. Cause I expect self-righteous ranting and irrational hatred of others' sexuality get him off pretty successfully too.

I believe that would be it. .... And for a guy who's really going to need a job someday (likely someday soon), the stupidity and laziness he keeps demonstrating, even in the way he went about his quest for side nookie, have to be sinking his chances even further. Not only would he be a huge reputation risk to any business that hired him, he's looking like such a lackadaisical idiot that even a family friend who might consider hiring him to mow lawns or deliver flyers must be thinking, Crap, is he even capable of doing that job?