Churchhoney

So you mean that there are probably additional Duggar skeletons stashed in filed documents around Arkansas, and he hopes to use the fear of lawsuits to keep people from releasing them, even if it would be a legal requirement to do so under FOIA, if somebody made a request? Could be. But I'm not sure how much that would accomplish either. I don't really see that the city has a tremendous amount to lose in this suit. They have their own lawyers, so it won't cost them much. And if some judge determines that the release was illegal -- although it doesn't look to this non-lawyer that it was, given what's in the Arkansas statute that I've seen -- then I guess they'd have to pay some damages, I guess. But how much would those be, considering that even a judge who declared the release illegal would have to see that the law was darned fuzzy on the point, and that the city's release procedure doesn't really look malicious or negligent -- just a different reading of a fuzzy law. Plus, their having to pay damages would only deter releases that also were in the gray areas of the FOIA law -- and those seem to mostly surround stuff with children involved. And I sure hope that any other Duggar skeletons don't involve children but involve finances or something.

Jim Bob hired a lawyer named "crass"? And his new earning plan is to sue people for things they did that were probably legal and hope they pay him off so he'll go away? I don't know how well that's going to work.

Do they have pregnancy-test machines? Because the Duggar homes oughta have those. You know, in case friends come over.

Good point. I do think that doing some of these things -- such as looking at airplanes -- may give some of them desires that (Jim Bob believes) cannot be righteously fulfilled, though, such as working for an evil corporation or getting an education. And I hope there's a way out of that problem for some of them, too.

Oh, I get it. Thanks. Everybody needed an excellent foreign language back when the missionary work started, but once you've got non-native speakers already, you don't need to fully train up and import so many people from the U.S. any more. .... Still don't see how even a super-intensive six-month language course prepares you to initiate conversations about these very subtle subjects, but of course you could pair people up with a native speaker in at least some cases.

Yeah, I agree. But even though I might not want to watch her, I'm pretty sure that TLC -- or somebody -- would jump at the chance to film it. I can see them doing a "Breaking Anything" from "Breaking the Convent" to "Breaking the Brothel" or "Breaking the Democratic Party" to "Breaking CitiBank." Don't the networks love that kind of stuff? After all, a "rebel" show always has both internal and external conflict, often of the most intense kind. Plus, it's got the "Englishman in New York" thing going, too. In Jessa's case, I wasn't thinking "bad girl," though. I was thinking more along the lines of -- Go to college or a career or tech school, get a job and enjoy having it and have only one kid.... while Ben becomes a skeptic, goes back to school and states his ambition to be working in the lab of a company trying to develop effective male contraceptives. I did conveniently forget that they already have a kid, though, which certainly does complicate things. When I left my home, I didn't grab onto my lost childhood and adolescence by doing wild fun that I thought I'd missed out on, but I was a volatile emotional wreck for years, which of course would also be bad for a kid (then again, lots of people who haven't left anything are volatile emotional wrecks while having kids ...)

So maybe the others are one of the church/local groups that came for a really short-term "mission" and Jill and Derick are semi-members of the staff, or something, maybe assigned to help the group out, or something? I'm really confused about what they do and about what this group does. I'm only familiar with missions in which people build houses, dig wells and provide dentistry and such and this doesn't appear to be one of those. What exactly does this group that J and D are a part of (???) do? Does its staff mainly manage the U.S. visitors? And what's the aim for the visiting U.S. groups? Encouragement for them to raise money to help the local villages after they go back to the U.S.? Just general consciousness raising? Or what? I assume that the mission group also runs the "conferences" and such for locals and does the other stuff they mention such as visiting schools and so on. But I'm still confused about that, too. It looks like mainly talk-conversion -- but I only gather that from some vague statements on their website -- so I assume that the actual on-site staff must have spectacular language skills, since I don't see how you talk people into joining your religion without that.... especially if you're trying to convince somebody to be Protestant and not Catholic, as they must be doing to some extent here. That's kind of a subtle thing, no? ... And, of course, then there's D and J -- Do they actually have the language skills to do this? Or are they doing some actual tangible services instead? Or just working with the other visiting U.S. people? This talk-conversion thing really baffles me. I know it's been going on for centuries, but I haven't paid much attention to it so I'm really confused about how it works. I think of the Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists, who are converting by talk all over the globe, and I'm thinking -- How the heck do they do that? Surely Utah doesn't hold enough Mormons who speak each of the world's languages sufficiently to talk theology for them to be active on every continent. Yet there they are. Crap. Now I'm going to have to start reading books about missionaries. Too much stuff on my reading list already.

Duggars meet "The Right Stuff." And "The Right Stuff" laughs its head off. I feel sorry for those kids, since they've had less than zero encouragement or help to muster the right stuff. But at some point it does depend on your realizing that you do have a backbone of your own -- and the missing muscle -- and using them to help yourself. Here's hoping that the astronaut dream, or some dream, is percolating in some Duggar's head. .... It's all very well to go to air shows and act as if you love planes, but nobody's going to do anything besides hobby fly unless they fight for it. To fly for an airline or FedEx or whatever these days, you almost have to be ex-military, given the amount of competition from ex-military pilots. And JB doesn't seem inclined to allow anyone to join up. .... They might aim at being private pilots for corporations or something, but even there they have to qualify as pilots for multi-engine planes. I'd like to think that John David is working on that, but I don't really see how, since it seems they own only single-engine planes, and is Jim Bob really willing to pony up for the additional training and flight hours in somebody else's plane that this would take? I have my doubts. Especially since he must at least vaguely realize that "pilot" is an undesirable career for a Duggar since noone who flies as a profession has any control over their own schedules. I hope John David has been able to get instrument rated, at least. Would hate to think that he's not only confined to being a hobby/slave pilot for JB but is also strictly limited as to where he can fly at night. Perpetual childhood is depressing.

Sad and ironic. Since, boy, would she ever get a spinoff if she offered to rebel. Would be great if one of them were smart enough to figure this out. Especially because a lot of them are going to have to see the wisdom of moving away from JimBob eventually. Hard to see how they'll all eat in years to come, otherwise. JB's clearly not smart, hardworking or lucky enough to feed a small town in perpetuity. And I can't imagine that recent events are going to make it any easier for him to earn money, in the long run.

How about Eli Stone? The staffs of those spiritually oriented shows have a legitimate beef with God, I'd say. He's been very lax in letting them get canceled, despite all the attention he seems to pay to American television.

Not surprising, i suppose. Gotta own all that stuff, because who knows? One day we might figure out something to do with people's billions of snapshots! The endless redirect loop would be a way to prevent it without actually preventing it, I guess .... You could still see them if you have really really really fast eyes. Like, if you're a fly, perhaps.

I think they should go to Animal Planet. I envision a new show called "My Cat Owner from Hell." I'd like to see Jackson Galaxy kick their asses on a weekly basis. He might be willing to go after them for their treatment of dogs and children, too. Don't they? I have no idea, since I almost never look at instagram. ... Well, at least all those friends now know how to get cached versions of stuff that does allow itself to be cached!

Thanks for answering my query. This is kind of what I think, too. With the money and the previous status quo shriveling up, this is the first real shock they've had that might get some of the kids to start thinking. A big shocking change in your circumstances can do this. And I agree that Josh is a good candidate to be one of the questioners. If his brain isn't getting kicked into gear by everything that's happened in 2015, then how could it ever?

Similarly, why did they need to have so many children? It would have been cheaper and absolutely prettier.

Ha!

When your friend Googles "jessa seewald instagram" s/he will find a little arrow just to the right of the url (which appears in green below the name of the page). S/he should put the mouse on that arrow and a little menu will come down, with the word "cached" on it. Then your friend must click on "cached."

...with every breath he takes.

I wonder if he sees it that way. ... I can't decide. Would love to hear what you and others think about how Josh might view JB and M's performance through the whole decade-plus saga.

C'mon now. We all know that women's only truly valuable contribution to family life is giving birth. What kids require after that is a mere nothing. A child could do it.

I'm hoping it's mainly just an artifact of the dumber-news-media momentum that keeps hitting on a topic that's got lots of hits for some time after the actual news stops. Yahoo, for example, probably relies on a computer algorithm for posting stories to such an extent that big news like the Josh scandal would encourage the algorithm to keep posting Duggar stories up high for quite some time afterward, especially if people click on them in search of news. If that's the case, then it ought to stop after a while.

And the freakin' Duggars (and TLC) have contributed to making this seem like a dream to some naive young idiots in America. That's reason enough alone for the show to go off the air.

She's Gary Trudeau's wife. And who's Gary Trudeau? Yeah, very good point. Even with many actual accomplishments, and much broader channels of distribution, people's names fade away quickly in this buzzing world. Obscurity -- the Duggars' soon-to-be fate. Don't see how it can't affect their other gigs, too. And since they really have done nothing worth thinking about, they have little to no chance of revival, even in most people's memory. Unless TLC brings them back, of course. Argh.

Blank books sell fairly well. I'm sure a lot of leghumpers would buy one of those with the Duggars on the cover. Or they could do multiple special editions. One with Jim Bob, one with Michelle, one with Grandma, and so on .... Heck, even Amy's griping fiance could get a cover .... There'd probably be quite the little market of teenage collectors. Given their grammar and spelling, many of those fans aren't interested in reading anyway.

I don't necessarily mind lunkhead jock types. But being convinced that you're the hottest thing evah. And posing so that that belief becomes only too visible. Big turnoff for anybody but the hopelessly dim, Bin-jermin.

This is why I have a hard time seeing how at least one of those kids hasn't exploded or run far far away by this point. This situation obtained in my family of origin as well, and it made me furious from the time I was a tiny child. Because they're essentially throwing the things they can do in your face, while pretending that they have no idea they're doing that. It made me madder than almost anything else and really cut me off from the people who were doing it as well as other family members who defended it or were apparently oblivious to it. To be denied human freedom by someone who obviously has enjoyed their own is galling beyond belief. And yet I haven't seen any Duggar kid explosions or escapes to this point. Baffles me.