Literata

TLC's going to be in dire straits. The Willises aren't cutting it as Duggars 2.0; the newer little-people shows are interchangeable, and the Little Couple isn't adopting any more kids for the time being, presumably. And really, how many more wedding dresses can we sit through? So many of the other shows -- Breaking Amish, the gypsy ones -- are just tawdry. It's going to be interesting to see what they come up with.

Reading this, I'm pretty convinced they need to go. All great points.

Not condoning this, but I'm wondering if TLC is trying to find a way around canceling -- not just because the franchise is the network's cash cow, but because of the members of the family who don't suck. I know the powers-that-be would be motivated much more by revenues than by the welfare of a group of kids, but if the family's collective relationship with the crew is any indication, the association seems to have been mutually rewarding for the past decade. I imagine they had a far easier time letting go of the HBB gang. I agree. The middles and littles are at enough of a disadvantage simply having Boob and MEchelle as parents, and from Jackson on down, they've never known anything but the cameras and crew. I hate the thought of further isolating them.

Boob and MEchelle have also been replaced on the landing page. The center photo now is the Willises. "19 Kids" is still listed under shows, but the attention is scaled back.

TLC needs to come up with some sort of statement. Even "we're evaluating the future of the show" is preferable to ... crickets.

My guess is Nepal. Now that Cathy's health has improved, I can see them taking off for a couple of years. Derick obviously loved his time there, and Jill seemed to enjoy it as well. Or maybe, given the earthquakes and the devastation and the fact that they now have Iz, they'll go elsewhere. But my guess is a mission. Run like the wind, kids, and take good care of each other.

I don't care how dirty Jill's feet are or how crunchy Jinger's hair is; I'll never snark about any of the girls again. The pain I feel for them takes my breath away. And in retrospect, so much makes sense now: Jill's rule-following and devotion to control and order. Jana's obvious sadness and relinquishment. Jessa's fuck-you self-protection. Jinger's devastation at losing Jessa, and Joy's at losing Jill. And throughout ALL of it, they cooked the meals and raised the kids and functioned as indentured servants to the very people who were obligated to protect them, but didn't.

I'm wearing my long chevron skirt today in solidarity with the girls. :) I am so genuinely sad about this. It breaks my heart most of all to think of those girls not having felt safe in their own home. And given the patriarchy, I'm sure they all idolized Josh before this happened. I can't begin to imagine their fear, hurt and confusion. It all is just unspeakably sad.

The Nepal episodes are on now. Boob: "I'm here because I don't want Jill to get hurt." Ah, the irony.

Is there any way, in that Boob and MEchelle maintained an unsafe environment for their daughters all those years, they might be facing investigation into the welfare of the children still in the home?

I don't think we can even begin to imagine the ripples from this. This is TLC's cash cow. I do worry about the effect on the younger kids, who have grown up with the crew members and seem pretty attached to them. They've never known any other kind of life. I hope the demise of the show doesn't make things worse for them, financially or otherwise.

TLC has no choice but to cancel them, right? Does anyone think they'll let them stick around after this?

The only way I see the Duggars salvaging anything from this is if they were to speak honestly about it, admit their failures, and show remorse ... but at the same time, there's no justifying the fact that they didn't find help for the kids. And it's also not reasonable to expect them to admit failure because I'm sure that in their eyes, they didn't fail. This has to be just devastating for TLC. IIRC, there's another Duggar marathon scheduled for tonight.

Thanks for that. ^^^ I know we all appreciate the work you do.

As much as I've snarked about this family, I'm very, very sad that things have gone down this way. Not sad for Boob and MEchelle, but sad for all the kids ... this is going to have a huge impact on all of them.

One of the kids lives with her grandfather? What? Or could he have lived with them for a time?

Fox News and the New York Daily News are running it now. Neither is a bastion of integrity, IMO, but they're a step up from pseudo-blogs. This is not going away. That was MEchelle's dad's name.

I just don't see that happening. She's under Josh's "headship," and she'll stand by him. I'd like to see the Kellers get involved, but they won't; "ownership" of Anna was traded from Mike Keller to Smuggar, and in their culture, I don't think it's even possible for a father to get involved once the daughter's not "his" anymore.

At the risk of sounding bizarre, I'm glad we're able to process this together. I'm an adult woman in a professional occupation, and I had to shut my office door to hide the fact that I'm in tears over something that happened to a group of young women I don't know from Adam, but inexplicably care about.

I'm sure the Bateses are horribly alarmed about this as well. And the Dillards, and Seewalds, and Jacksons... And you just know the girls were somehow implicated for "defrauding" their brother.

My sister, a therapist, just said something that made a lot of sense. In most families, a child's natural curiosity about the opposite sex often makes itself known when an older child watches Mom or Dad change a baby sibling's diaper, or bathe that child. A parent can then offer simple explanations about the differences. In the Duggar family, I would imagine there was absolutely NO such thing as allowing a boy child to watch a girl's diaper being changed, or for toddler boys and girls to bathe together. Couple that with the fact that, in that family, sex is the subtext for EVERYTHING, and that sets the scene for Josh to act out his curiosity inappropriately. Not to say for one second that what he did can or should be excused, and not to say that it constituted normal exploration. But boundaries are so, so messed up in that family. Let me be very clear -- the girls, not Josh, are the victims here. But MEchelle and Boob owed their son some help as well. And the whole mess began at the hands of Gothard. If anything good can come of this, I hope it enhances the dialogue around the fact that such religions are, as we've said for so long, nothing but cults, and that cults are dangerous, and that children deserve to be rescued from them.

The wild card in this is Amy. She seems closer to Josh than any of his sisters do -- understandably, now -- and I can't help thinking she would have been less than thrilled to be around him, or the family in general, if he had abused her. I also can't imagine Deanna, or Grandma, allowing her to be around Josh if she had been one of the victims.

I read that report and literally felt tears come. Boob and MEchelle deserve any consequence that comes their way, and shame, SHAME on them for not getting Josh the help he needed and getting their daughters (and Amy, if she was impacted as well) to counseling STAT. OMG, those poor girls. No wonder Jana, as she shared in girls' book, "had a problem with someone in (her) family." Poor Anna, and her poor kids. I am just sick. ETA: If this happened, no wonder Jana won't leave home. Even though Josh isn't there anymore, she knows what potentially could happen to her little sisters at the hands of someone else.

The most heartbreaking thing about this, to me, is that Smuggar -- and all the rest of the kids -- should be able to count on unconditional love from their parents, and the fact that Boob allegedly took his son to the police station for something that's sounding increasingly minor and ridiculous is pretty much unforgivable.

Any speculation that he could have touched one of his sisters makes me unspeakably sad. I hope beyond hope that's not the case.