Churchhoney

Well, I don't know if they named the college, but at the end of the Digging in with the Duggars episode (or whatever that was called), they had a preview of things coming up. And one thing was JimBob putting some kind of blessing on Joseph, who was said to be going away to college (or some such verbiage...)

It's the same way that a muscle in your back disappears when you ought to lift a two-year-old but magically reappears when you water ski. I really think a lot of this is a result of putting yourself and your 'mission" on reality tv. Almost inevitably, you end up falsifying your life -- and, worse, tacitly teaching your kids to falsify theirs.

Wow. Perfect ..... I think my mind shuts down on that aspect, when it comes to JimBob, especially.

Kinky Duggars will be the award winner, though.

Lots of us don't watch this show. I've memorized several episodes. And I don't watch this show.

I wonder what you major in after SOTDRT? They don't seem to teach love of math there, which leaves out a heck of a lot of useful modern majors. I'm all for humanities degrees, but if you get one of those you have to exert even more hustle and creativity to turn it into a salable commodity in this day and age. That would probably leave Josh out. Maybe he can flip houses? That seems to be a family specialty -- to some degree, anyway; although they seem to be holding more than flipping these days, looks like.

I doubt that the new revelation about Huck's coauthor being accused of child molestation is going to help Josh in his job search in Huckabee's office either. Huckabee's going to want to be extra super special careful after two of these stories emerging about his associates in one month. (although, to be fair, the coauthor is the associate of a ton of people -- he was one busy coauthor) We just keep coming back to this question, don't we?

Well, a tiny handful of networks are still running Cosby. Similarly, while I don't think that Josh can ever show up in the mainstream again, I would bet that there will always be a small hard core that sees the Duggars, including Josh, as persecuted believers and will invite them to things. I doubt there will be a whole lot of money in that, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't some. I mean, Josh repented so that makes him a sterling example of right thinking to hold up in contrast to the unredeemed and unredeemable unrepentant homosexuals, not to mention the wholly hellbound transsexuals, who went so far as to tinker medically with their god-given bodies and are equally unrepentant about acting on their contrary-to-how-god-made-them feelings. Plus, Josh, JB and M were brought low by the liberal media. So they're martyrs, too. I think there will always be some who'll pay to hear them.

Not to mention umpteen tv mystery shows and movie studios.

This. To be fair, though, they may well not have known beforehand that Jana would near-crumble. Sometimes the person who freezes in an emergency is the very last person you'd expect -- like the person who's had the most training or the person who's been in charge of emergency planning. Unfortunately, you don't find that out until there's a real-life trial by fire.

Yeah, I agree. I think the usual pattern is really to release the big thing first but then follow up with the other dribs and drabs. You kind of have to release the biggest thing first or people will dismiss you as nitpicky and your big reveal will lose its effect. I'm pretty sure this has been the pattern in other instances when pubs have come upon a very big story about someone. First a few tiny teasers, then very quickly the big bomb, and then a train of somewhat related but relatively small things. Yes. Can't imagine why they didn't do this, especially given the situation that already existed. But then I can't imagine why they were accusing people of bribery on national television, either. So I'm guessing that irrationality is kind of ruling the roost at the TTH these ddays.

They're still giving conference presentations on how they "equip and release" their brood, however. They just don't equip them very well or release them very far, I guess.

So basically, if you want to be king, just hatch out enough people to start your own country. I guess that worked for thousands of years.

Interesting thought. ... I'd guess that they didn't want anybody to look comfortable. They wanted to portray them as vulnerable, so they isolated each on a high chair where their positions would subliminally read as kind of isolated and precarious?

Plus, I think these guys were already Christians, just the "wrong kind" of Christians. So he didn't so much convert them as shove them a little bit sideways. .... Very expensive activity.

Well, it seems as if child actors were deemed to be not fully included under child-labor laws until specific laws naming their profession were made (maybe because the conditions of their jobs are so different from the ordinary jobs that laboring kids might do?) And now it's been established, apparently, that reality-tv kids don't fall under those child-labor laws established for performers, even though a lot of the same conditions apply to them as apply to child actors, so they too would need either new child-labor laws for them specifically or to be included in amended versions of the laws for child actors, I think. (plus the child-labor laws that limit hours and such, such as the laws that apply to child performers, are state laws, not federal ones -- so in this case Arkansas would need to make a law specifically) Further complicating the matter is that the payments provided to reality tv people in these documentary shows really just give the production company the right to film your supposedly everyday activities. They aren't official pay for your "work." Just pay people a relatively nominal fee for the right to film them and show the film, and you're done. So if the parents aren't getting paid for their work, then the kids wouldn't be either, in the contracts that now exist, I think. ... And the last thing the networks want to do is put reality tv people on some kind of wage or salary because that would ultimately push the price of these shows way up and vastly constrain stuff such as filming people in the middle of the night or when they're having lunch or the like. So that's not going to happen.

Nice metaphor for the overall Duggar lifestyle and philosophy, I'd say.

Actually, they do recommend plumbing line in other places, though, just not in the book. http://nogreaterjoy.org/articles/questions-answered/ Here, Debbie recommends it in a question-answer section of their blog: ' Please give me a description of the switch or rod of which you so often speak. I wish you could send me one so I could see it. 'The rod we speak of is a plumbing supply line that can be bought at any hardware store or large department store. It is a slim, flexible, plastic tubing that supplies water to sinks, and toilets. Ask for “¼ inch supply line.” They cost less than one dollar. I always give myself one swat before I swat the child to remind myself how much force to exert. It stings the skin without bruising or damaging tissue. It’s a real attention-getter. Michael demonstrates its use in our new Seminar videos.'

JimBob was in the school's first graduating class, 1983. (it's an elementary school as well as a high school, and it opened in 1976). And according to Wikipedia, at least, that graduating class had only 12 students. For a certain kind of kid -- an insecure kid, for example -- an environment that small and sheltered would seem to be a "privilege," I think. Heck, you could be BMOC by besting only 11 other kids. Also -- on Deanna -- she of course wouldn't have been able to graduate from Shiloh Christian in any case, because they obviously didn't plan to have a senior class until the year that her little brother was scheduled to graduate. That alone could explain why she might not have gone there. (might have been other reasons too, of course)

Snide and sneaky Duggar/TLC reference in Salon Game of Thrones review: 'The reason it’s unnecessary is because we exist in that world already and the genre the show exists in is called “fantasy” not “reality.” If I wanted to see the continual abuse and devaluation of women within modern patriarchal contexts, I would watch TLC.' http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/game_of_thrones_recap_there_is_no_commodity_in_westeros_more_valuable_and_more_worthless_than_a_girl/

Well, Carter was one who actually had a lot of church commitment before the presidency. And everybody hated the poor guy -- with many of his fellow Christians chief among his detractors and at least some basing their opposition on Carter stances on the environment and international affairs that he took because he believed his faith recommended them. And Obama really did go to the liberal United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago where pastor Jeremiah Wright got him into big, pretty long-lasting trouble with his passionate sermon in which he tried to apply his view of Christian morality to his view of race and class relations in America. Oh, and Romney -- a pretty faithful Mormon, I believe. And that didn't win him any friends that I noticed either. So .... thinking maybe some would-be POTUSes now think that staying away from those houses of worship could be the smarter course. Just sayin. Of course for some, like Josh and JimBob, it might be the least of their problems.

Being a hopeless snoop, I was looking up some people on LinkedIn this morning (for a legitimate purpose!), remembered one of the names of the other employees named in the email and searched for it (because I'm a snoop, as I mentioned). Guy is indeed a user-tax accountant at Walmart headquarters. So if that is any kind of phony email, somebody want to pretty major lengths to construct it. Thinking that they didn't. Hoping that Derick is doing something sensible and helpful for his family by his move, wherever it's taking him. I may well be wrong about this, but I thought that Derick's church (Cross Church) is not only SBC but that its pastor, Ronnie Floyd, is the current SBC president. .... Maybe a different Ronnie Floyd, perhaps? I thought it was the same guy, but it's certainly possible it's not.

And I'm sure that JB consulted his tax accountant, who verified all this, before old dad authorized the stock-up-the-storage-shed mega-registries.

It was probably in a church with no actual clergy though, right? ... Hey! Another advantage of home churching! Oh, good catch. Maybe he was motivated to lose the pounds by his inability to swing his legs over a trapeze or something.

Yeah, it's really sad that they'll now be constrained like this -- just as they were starting to look as if they enjoyed spreading their wings a bit.