Churchhoney

Maybe Johanna will be the one who'll forge her own path, ask some questions and do something a little different, then. I hope they're long off the air by the time she does, though. And I think that being off the air will help. They won't be able to beat them over the head with the need to keep the family brand pristine for the paycheck's sake.

It spells, "Hey! Wanna hire a photographer with no eye?!"

I'm thinking teen or young-20-something female "professional" photographers are probably the most common variety in Duggar circles. It's one of the few non-cooking-and-child-raising roles open to unmarried teen and 20-something women, probably not "headship-like" enough for most of the boys/men, and something that the females give up once they're courting or at least once they're married. Wonder if doing more photography for Duggar acquaintances has ever been a real option for Jinger or if she just isn't as into it as some other girls are. Here's the website of another young fundie woman who's really really into photography -- and she's making the rounds of acquainted families, just as Zellon has. This girl is so serious about her photography that I wonder whether it'll be open to her as a full-fledged professional option as she gets a little older. Would be tragic if it isn't: http://thebrightnessproject.com/author/patiencepennington/

Kind of shows what the Ds' shows will be like after the real TLC cancellation (sometime next spring when the new season/spinoff bombs in the ratings because there are no girls' weddings?), when Jim Bob tries to steer his own video ship on youtube, I'm guessing. Meticulous work doesn't seem to be in the Duggars' repertoire. So all these little things that professional tv people might remember to have done -- well, they'll just be dropped by the wayside. Strangely enough, JB might inadvertently produce a show that gave more actual insight into their messed-up lives, because his attempts to shape the narrative are so damned clumsy, and he won't have a clue about many many little things that he would need to do to make the family look more "normal" and attractive. Would serve him right if he ended up producing a true documentary of his horror show by accident. However, the only thing that I think would really serve the kids here is to have video for public consumption removed from their lives forever. "Oh, Jill only has the one grandbaby? Who are those other grandbabies then?"

Crux of the matter, I'd say.

Well, I'm a pretty cold fish and so are most of the people in my inner circle, so it's not the really the lack of three-hour weeping sessions that strikes me as way off about the Duggars but a disconnectedness, unnaturalness, uneasiness and phoniness that I see (or maybe imagine!) about the whole affair (and most of their other affairs). I'm not a hugger, for example, but I do turn toward people who are upset and provide sympathetic looks, murmured encouragement and friendly punches on the arm that people who know me understand. I just don't see natural connection and interest flowing among most of the Duggars, either in the warm-people or the reserved-people forms. (And if I had Jim Bob and a video camera staring at me all the time, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be exhibiting any connections or interests either -- so... not blaming the Duggar kids for their confusions.)

Dead-on, devastating description. On the part of the kids -- the missing ones and the emotionless crew that are there -- I think maybe we're seeing their horrifying coping mechanisms. When you look at the clueless careless false and close-to-insane people they've been raised by, the sheer number of people living in that household that makes it more like a boarding institution than a family, and the constant presence of video cameras and prep for being in front of video cameras in their lives, I would bet that they're all just completely over the whole thing. Who wouldn't be? Stuck in a sort of mid-Victorian torture chamber with a wide-open picture window for public gawking and parents and a tv show that insist on phoniness at all times? There aren't a lot of possible ways to cope with that except to run far and fast, and for whatever reason, Duggars don't do that. So here on camera are many of the typical coping methods for the trapped: stuffing their emotions and thoughts, putting please-pops-and-uterus-mom facades over pissed-offness and misery, and keeping everything on as superficial a level as possible. Just in general, checking out and trying not to stick out or feel or reveal anything. This stunted crap is what a Duggar upbringing and tv fame have wrought, I think. Those poor kids.

It's Chad Gallagher. He's Legacy Consulting. (although he may have other organizations and companies -- the Duggars have dozens, so why not?) http://legacyincorporated.com/our-principal/

Installment of a creepy Gothard story. Makes me wonder how much influence his sex-related creepiness has had on the Duggars' warped views of what is and isn't appropriate. https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/how-i-survived-homeschooling-in-bill-gothards-cult-part-three/ "At some point Bill took off his shoes and encouraged me to do the same. I gladly took them off, since I’m used to not wearing shoes whenever I can. Shortly after, I felt his foot on my ankle. I quickly pulled my feet away and to the side, looking over at him. He was smiling at me. I said “Pardon me”, and tried to put distance between us. Yuck was the word running through my head, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the van. A part of me wondered if I’d misunderstood – maybe his foot accidentally hit me. Even so, I made sure to keep my body as much to myself as possible. I was enormously relieved when we arrived. "I don’t remember very much about what was taught that week, except that it was more of the same stuff in the “Wisdom” Booklets....Occasionally Bill had me sit across or next to him when we gathered to eat. I learned quickly to sit with my feet tucked securely away from him and my chair moved away as far as possible.... "....At some point towards the end of the week, we had an afternoon session where we were instructed to examine ourselves and find any sin that would hinder us from helping others. We were told this sin could be unkind thoughts, lust of the eyes, too much “worldly” influence (i.e. music with a beat, wrong clothes, spending time with the wrong people-anyone outside the group or who lived life differently and wouldn’t accept “God’s truths” as taught by IBLP/ATIA), stepping outside of your father’s authority, etc."

Oh, I feel bad now for Jilly Muffin's buddy team. Their little escape place at the Dillards has evaporated. Poor kids.

All the world's a stage for Jim Bob, isn't it? Those kids are set up to believe that every damn moment in life should be a public performance. Takes the social-media warping of all of us to a whole other level, it seems to me. (not that I could stand to watch this all the way through. I made it to 37 seconds. Jim Bob's unctuous phoniness gives me the creeps.)

Yes, and birth or toddlerhood-or-younger is a very vulnerable time. And that's when the Duggars were got. Nevertheless, it still seems unusual that no curious or vibrant people or people with drive seem to have emerged among the large group who are now in the late-teen-to-young-adult stage. Many have remarked, here and elsewhere, on just how unusual that seems, but none of the Duggar "techniques" seem to be powerful enough to cause it. So for the moment I going to stick with the heap of stupid -- and the lure of tv money that's stronger than any other impulses -- as my best guess.

And we know that this particular Huckabee friend is a dab hand at setting up organizations that funnel cash to your nearest and dearest and other non-"purpose"-related folks. So I'm sure it's all structured to Jim Bob's liking. Since its inception, Huck PAC has never spent more than 12 percent of its funds on candidates or other PACs. It gave only 5 percent of its revenues—that is $47,000 of $1,063,142—to candidates during the 2012 cycle, when Huckabee briefly flirted with a second presidential run. Meanwhile, the PAC's budget has increasingly flowed to firms that specialize in direct-mail fundraising, a notoriously inefficient process that can cost a PAC almost as much money as it yields. So to a certain degree Huck PAC donors are not underwriting Huckabee's favorite conservative causes; they're financing more fundraising. http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2015/01/20/mike-huckabee-pays-family-400000-from-his-pac http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/mike-huckabee-pac-paid-his-family-almost-400000

But then it wouldn't be holy and part of their mission (or pretentious and self-righteous, but those are just collateral benefits). Hey, don't knock his spelling. He's just trying to be a good in-law and fit in with his wife's family.

Knowing that you lied and thinking that you were wrong to do so are two different things, however. Just ask the Mormon elders, among many others.

She's certainly been tutored in what lying is and isn't by her lying parents and by the life of a "reality" tv star on a show in which the principals are determined not to present reality. Plus, the only actual sins and wrongs in the world are sexual. So I guess her life lessons have all pretty much told her that misleading for God and Duggardom is a-ok.

Yep, I've resisted this thought for a long time, too. And I do hope we're wrong .... Unfortunately, it's hard to come up with another explanation. I will say that, in my own family, lack of intelligence wasn't a requirement to accept the brainwashing and the family norms. It was a smaller family, though, and the program was set from the earliest days, so conditioning began in infancy and never got watered down because sheer numbers made full-on indoctrination too difficult, as I suspect it has with the Duggars.

This is where the Duggar types set themselves apart. They're so fearful, self-absorbed, arrogant and incurious that they pretty much never reach out to the world like this. They just bounce up to people and yell "We're a family of 19 kids!" and then add "Do you know the Lord like I know the Lord (because I'm sure you don't!)." As you say, nobody ever learns anything this way, either about themselves or about anything else. And it also keeps them isolated -- because who really wants to hang out with people uninterested in anything but themselves? -- which only heightens the fearfulness and the arrogance. Honestly, though, the older kids all seem to be so set into -- and apparently pleased with -- this pattern that I'm beginning to think that the main Jim Bob/Michelle problem may be a big old heap of stupid in their intertwined family trees. Otherwise, it's hard for me to believe that they wouldn't have turned up at least a mild but visible skeptic of their methods by now.

Yeah, I agree. I was only saying that that book, for whatever reason, is classified as one of what's called the "pseudogospels" and isn't among the bunch generally published as "the apochrypha." I wasn't commenting on the authenticity or truth or whatever of any of them. It's obviously all the product of various people's ideas, analysis and agendas through history.

If the clay birds are in the Infancy Gospel of St. Thomas, as someone said above, then that's a pseudogospel.

I can see Michelle giving it up, too, since she gives up everything. It's clear that it doesn't require either parent giving it up, though. In some cases -- most that I've heard and read about, in fact -- the older kids are just added to the list of those empowered to do it, since sometimes they're in charge of the younger kids when the parents are busy elsewhere. If you demand instant obedience -- including to an older sibling who's in charge -- it clearly makes sense to some people to empower the sibling to exact an immediate consequence if the obedience isn't forthcoming. According to their kids' accounts, Chris Jeub and Libby Anne's parents, for example, kept spanking even though some of their children were also empowered to do it.

Absolutely. But If you read around the blogs and such written by young adults who've left many of these mega-households, you'll see that sister moms, especially, seem to be handed this responsibility more often than you'd ever want to think. A few prominent examples: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/06/how-being-an-older-sibling-in-a-big-family-is-like-being-a-polygamous-sister-wife.html http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/03/giving-the-child-the-rod-2.html http://cynthiajeub.com/2014/10/im-sorry-you-lost-your-kids/ https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/their-happiness-does-not-depend-on-me-asenaths-story/

The really scary thing, though, is that a fair number of parents who, ostensibly at least, are much smarter, better educated, more well meaning and less neurotic than the Duggars actually have done and do do this. Yet more evidence that there are serious, serious problems with the Quiverfull lifestyle.

And when people are isolated like these kids and there's an actual program to convince them of their parents' right-thinking and other so on, there may never be enough distance and independence for some to see them as they really are. So says my family experience, at any rate. I don't grok Jana really, but from the superficial impression that I have, I can see her being one for whom no amount of distance will really give her perspective on JB and M.

Yes, but still it takes many people (well, okay, me ...) quite a bit of time even to realize that there are choices, let alone suss them out and get up the nerve to exercise them. It's not as if a switch is flipped and you suddenly view the world completely differently. And your family upbringing forms the very structure of your brain. So the judgments of your family toward your potential choices are still going to be strong voices in your head. And Jessa and Jill haven't made the really big choice that leaves you more free -- leaving completely, at a run. They still have their parents continually in their lives, playing pretty much the same roles they've always played, and when someone else is playing their familiar role, the thing that seems natural to many people is to fall into your old familiar role too, I think. Plus, for many people it's difficult to imagine many of the good and constructive choices. When you've been isolated in ignorance, you first need to gain some knowledge even to know what other options are out there. And then you have to find out what it takes to pursue those options and then get up the nerve to do what it takes -- such as going out on your own to get a job. Not as easy as it sounds if you've had Jim Bob and Michelle telling you all your life that it's unacceptable to do that, that the people who run businesses you might work for are not to be trusted, etc. One choice that is more obvious is to just do the opposite of everything that you've learned. But the opposite isn't so much a choice as a knee-jerk reaction, and going the I'll-do-the-opposite route can cause a lot of chaos and often gets people into trouble, at least initially. I agree that making independent choices is possible for them. But it's a helluva lot easier said than done. With time, I'm sure some of the kids will do many things their own way, but I would bet that for just about everyone raised in a controlling and isolating household it takes longer than many people think reasonable for breakaways to exercise real independence. Exactly. And, to me, this is classic controlling abuser behavior. Non-empathetic, mean-spirited control freaks positively relish banning their victims from doing things at the same time as they brag about doing those things themselves. That's JB and M all over, and it's pure neurotic bullshit, born of their combined massive insecurities and arrogance. Nothing "Christian" about it.