So I'm going through the Duggar documentary again and making notes (cw for mentions of child abuse and Josh's crimes):

I'm on episode one and just noting the things that really stand out to me. And the first one that really jumps out is when Jim Bob and Michelle are confessing to the Holts about Josh's abuse, and the Holts say that Michelle would not let Jim Bob describe it in accurate terms.

The Holt's mention that the 1st time the Duggars talked to them about the abuse (which Michelle didn't even want to disclose to them in the first place), Jim Bob described it as molestation and Michelle stopped him and said, "don't you ever use that word again" and I find that to be super interesting............

I know that no parent wants to believe that their kid could be capable of something like that. But her lack of ability to acknowledge the reality of the situation I think makes a lot of sense given how they discuss the abuse going forward. It's very downplayed, it's framed as something that was just curiosity even Jessa and Jill have to talk about it that way in the interview they do with Megan Kelly.

And knowing what we know about the reality of the situation now, I think it's very telling that Michelle refuses to see what happened for what it really is. I truly believe her support of Josh since is genuine, and that she's has maybe found a way to mentally shield herself from the truth of what he's done, maybe by avoiding details all together. It makes me wonder if Anna does something similar.

Looking back at the culture war battles of 2022, one development that particularly sticks out to me is the American Republican/anti-woke side latching on to the idea of everything social progressives call for that involves minors being a form of "grooming" and/or adjacent to pedophilia. This welled up during the 2022 midterm campaign season and I doubt it reached its final boil during the elections; it probably isn't dying down anytime just yet.

My first reaction, around mid-2022, to seeing this new-ish trend was that it was once again an example of the Right looking at a rhetorical tactic of the Left (in this case, finding a near-universally despised personal trait and relentlessly tarring as many opinions as possible from the opposing side as coming from that trait) and deciding that hey, two can play at this game. The main name that the Left has taken to using against as many opposing opinions as possible is "racist"/"racism", and what's arguably the one label even worse to have attached to you than "racist"? Probably "pedophile" or (more mildly) "groomer".

From that point of view, I can see where this Republican/anti-woke strategy comes from, to the extent that it's been consciously employed and regardless of how blatantly hypocritical it is. But it still caught me by surprise and feels strange, I think because of my impression of being anti-grooming as more of a liberal progressive cause. Now mind you, I know that anything adjacent to pedophilia is reviled by pretty much all parts of the political spectrum, and I also know that the conservative Right (at least in America) has a history of tarring gay people as secretly pedophiles, insinuating that open homosexuality (and other forms of queerness) corrupts and endangers children, and so on. But over the 5-10 years or so previous to the rise of "groomer" accusations from the conservative side, I had come to firmly code raising the alarm about grooming behavior as more of a progressive SJ-ish thing, naturally occurring as a part of the Me Too movement. I had been exposed to a lot of talk in progressive circles about the power differentials that come with age differentials and so on. The whole Josh Duggar scandal some years back seemed split roughly along political lines, with only conservatives (most infamously Mike Huckabee) being willing to come to his defense. And I had a vague notion that liberal people took child molestation and terrible behavior adjacent to it as a sort of higher-priority societal crisis than conservatives did, much as this was clearly the case with rape in general.

So I had thought of cries of "Groomer!" and "Pedophile!" as similar to cries of "Racist!" in that they involve a name that absolutely nobody wants to be branded with, which refers to a type of person that almost everyone looks down upon and is determined not to be but which the Right has a stricter definition of, doesn't see in as many places, and tends to think the Left is overly paranoid about. And yet, for the time being at least, the Right seems to have gotten hold of "Groomer!" and "Pedophile!".

I found this a sort of bemusing (and also of course disturbing) irony, given the extent to which so many socially progressive people around me see grooming / pedophilia / child abuse as a very serious problem and are very sincere in their concerns about it. And to be honest, one of the things I couldn't help saying to myself was, "Let's see how this goes and how people feel when 'Groomer!' is used against them, when the other side stretches at every possible opportunity to compare our side to something we truly find despicable whenever we stand for something they don't like. Maybe this will give some people a new insight about how ineffective it is to blast everything they don't like on the other side as "racist" or other -ists or otherwise coming from something purely evil. It's going to be interesting to see how this changes the dynamic."

(It's worth mentioning as a qualification that the American Right did do something like this as recently as the mid-00's with comparing everyone less hawkish than them with terrorist-sympathizers, but that was a little less direct and seems to have already faded from many people's memories. A closer example would be some decades earlier when an awful lot of Americans seemed determined to brand anyone to the left of them as a Communist sympathizer, but of course this is even further removed from the present.)

It's interesting to look back on this half a year later, because I definitely intended to write a more sharply pointed post expressing most of my paragraphs above sometime around last summer, but it got lost in the shuffle as many of my potential blog posts do. And now it seems like it sort of came to an anticlimax. Anti-woke conservatives did quite well in the midterms as long as they weren't too Trumpy, but Democrats put in a better-than-expected performance. My liberal colleagues and acquaintances mostly seem to have ignored conservative rhetoric about groomers or just dismissed it as idiotic (which, to be fair, it basically is) rather than let it bother them beyond that, either on a direct, immediate level or in terms of making them rethink messaging or persuasive rhetoric from their/our own side. All of this seems to be fizzling over, relative to what I imagined back around July.

This account is a treasure but these fundies are bonkers. Also please tell me what differentiates a good Olive Garden from a less good one.

For People that were watching the Josh Duggar Trial on the news or Social media, one of the Duggar Family Friend widow had been asked by Anna Duggar or Jim Bob Duggar into asking the judge into giving him a 5-10 year prison sentence.

The Late Clark Wilson was a friend and real estate developer of JimBob and Michelle Duggar that was featured on the Duggar family documentary specials before they built the big house and before the Duggar family had 19 children.

Now, in an unexpected turn of events the children of Clark Wilson are now speaking out against the letter that was written by the aforementioned family member.

Please feel free to read these 3 facebook posts that the children wrote on their own Facebook page and tell me what you think about this development.

Credit goes to : Duggars Life is not all Pickles and Hairspray.

His mother and father bankrolled his legal fees. Would U do that for a pedo son?

Josh Transferred to FCI Seagoville in Seagoville, TX.

Federal Correctional Institute, Seagoville is a federal prison and sex offender management facility, which houses a large number of sex offenders and offers a sex offender treatment program.

Inmate Look–up For “Joshua Duggar”—

Josh has been transferred. Nothing about his location on the BOP site yet but he's gone from the Washington County Detainee Roster. Looks like Anna did go on a roadtrip to see her BFF (Best Federal Inmate Forever) yesterday.

Josh's rehearing was denied

Josh's rehearing for his appeal was denied.

I am so angry today. Being reminded of the Duggars and what that piece of shit did, how he got away with it for so long, how his horrible parents protected a sexual abuser instead of protecting their daughters, it reminds me so much of how terrible xtian families really are. 

Conservatives like to pretend they are the superior family model but then they go around and pull shit like this. And of course, others will try to defend them, or defend families but you know this kind of scenario is not unique in the Quiverfull cult. 

This is a normal occurrence. And not just the Quiverfulls, but a lot of christian cults and groups have this exact shit happening and they always side with the abusers. Always. 

Some thoughts about the Duggar documentary:

My childhood was not NEARLY as strict as the Duggars. I was raised in a republican controlled state (Tennessee, near Arkansas where the Duggar’s live) and I am from a republican Christian family; but I was public schooled, my parents used contraception, I was a cheerleader, I was fully vaccinated, they believed in divorce, I wore pants, I watched secular movies, tv, music, etc. as long as it wasn’t rated R.

Arguably the central theme of the documentary is the prevalence of abuse. I have never been raped so I can’t speak on that issue. When these parents say they want to protect their children from sexual abuse I believe them.

However, I think the physical hitting of children is a widespread issue in EVERY society since the dawn of time. Religion does offer a very convenient systemic endorsement of hitting kids, but plenty of non religious parents do it too. Pretty much every parent I know (regardless of religion or politics) believes that hitting kids is an absolutely mandatory basic requirement if you want your children to be good people. If you don’t hit your kids, many people I know will call you a bad, lazy, careless parent. I was not hit nearly as often as many kids I know, but I don’t think I deserved the way I was treated.

I have been at so many gatherings where I knew kids were being hit in the other room and I didn’t know what to do. I am complicit.

(Also please do not make any mean jokes about “white people” or “religious people” or “rural people” being inherently backwards or stupid or abusive or liking incest. Please be respectful when discussing these topics and acknowledge these people are victims of a terrible system and do not make light of incest please.)

Side notes: I think the title is a reference to the song “stained glass masquerade” by casting crowns. If you want the Mormon equivalent of this documentary watch “Keep Sweet, Pray, and Obey” on Netflix.

soooo I've seen on a few places (not WOACB bc i avoid her like the plague but she might have something to do with it idk) that a "source" who is close with Josh Duggar says he and Anna might be getting a divorce?

the most info I could find was basically just that information and that he told this person his wife was "done" with him, and with the asked of he meant the D word he said yea. Idk big if true, what do we think y'all

Okay so I was correct in figuring that Jill's book would be 95% stuff we already knew or correctly inferred.

The only thing I can't quite grasp is the whole idea that JimBob didn't pay his kids because he tried paying Josh and that worked out badly. WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN? Just that it made it harder to control and supervise him constantly to keep him out of trouble? Or?

TLC cancels Duggars’ ‘19 Kids and Counting,’ plans documentary on child abuse

The Duggars are done on TLC.

The cable network owned by Discovery Communications announced Thursday that it will cancel “19 Kids and Counting,” the long-running reality series that centers on Arkansas couple Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 19 children.

The series has been off the air since May, when it was reported that the couple’s eldest son, Josh, inappropriately touched five underage girls – four of them his sisters, the other a baby sitter – when he was a minor. Josh Duggar, now 27, was never arrested or charged.

“We spent the past month and a half in thoughtful consideration about the best way forward here,” said Marjorie Kaplan, group president of TLC, Animal Planet and Velocity networks, in a statement given to the Associated Press.

TLC also announced it would air a documentary in late August that deals with child abuse and that two of Josh’s reported victims – his sisters Jill and Jessa - would be included in the special. The network has teamed with two organizations that deal with raising the awareness of sexual violence and child abuse.

The Duggars were TLC’s top attraction, averaging more than 3 million viewers per episode. The series had aired on the network since 2008, but when the show was pulled after the reports about Josh Duggar, advertisers distanced themselves immediately, putting its future in jeopardy.

While Discovery executives huddled to find a way to come up with a Duggars spinoff, the family name has been too tarnished by the coverage of their scandal for advertisers to have a comfortable association with it.

Josh Duggar apologized for his actions in a statement on his Facebook page and resigned from his position at the Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying group.

Convicted PDF file Josh Duggar…

So I watched a video about the Duggar family... yeah fuck those people.