For those of you who haven’t heard of them, the Duggars are like the Christian Kardashians, with more kids but less bling and plastic surgery. They belong to a far-right religous whackjob movement called Quiverfull, where predominantly (exclusively?) white Christians try to out-reproduce the rest of us so they can ultimately implement their own version of Sharia law, except that the women wear long denim skirts and buttoned-up shirts instead of burkas to keep from inciting rape in the vulnerable male population. The Duggars’ show on TLC features submissive Michelle, who keeps pumping out babies (19 at last count) even though she and her husband Jim Bob have been told that the next one could bust open poor Michelle’s worn-out uterus.
Since the older members of Michelle and Jim Bob’s brood are past the age of consent, the Duggar franchise is expanding to the topic of marriage and the inevitable reproduction. The Quiverfull code for young couples is that they can’t hold hands until they’re engaged, and they can’t kiss (or fuck, obvs) until they’re married. Once they are married, in Michelle’s words, “Duggar women don’t get headaches. You always need to be available when he calls.” (That link is to a Dan Savage piece on the Duggars that is well worth reading.)
The oldest Duggar, Josh, is already married and the father of 3, and he’s holding down a job at the Family Research Council, an anti-gay hate group (naturally). Since Josh is obviously dull and predictable, it’s up to one of the younger Duggars to get some press attention, and 22 year-old Jessa has done so. Jessa got married recently, and the tabloids have picked up a post from what appears to be a parody blog which claims that Jessa and her new husband were so hot for each other that they retreated to a side room in the church and consummated the marriage. That seems a bit far-fetched, but I just wasted a few precious minutes at that blog and it definitely straddles the line between parody and plausibility. If you’re looking for a diversion from the depressing election news, you might enjoy it.
That said, whatever you might think of the Duggars, I’m sure all 7 of the voting-age kids and their parents went to the polls and voted this week, which is more than you can say for a hell of a lot of people who don’t think that a woman’s role is to submissively allow her uterus to function like a clown car.
The Other Chuck
TLC stands for The Loathing Channel now, right?
Butch
Of course the senior Duggar provided some comedy gold when he accompanied one of the girls to Nepal and decided, apparently because the people are brown, that the local language must be Spanish.
Belafon
The obvious fact that denim skirts and burqas are about control and not modesty is that my male imagination didn’t actually require seeing anything to fill in the blanks.
john not mccain
If she is pure that won’t happen. But if she has even the slightest bit of sin in her it will, and she will deserve it.
Amir Khalid
@Butch:
No screenwriter would dare put that in a movie. So it must be true. What were Duggar père and fille doing in Nepal anyway?
boatboy_srq
@Butch: This is why every single latino/latina showing up at a border station between San Diego and Brownsville is national front-page headlines, but containers full of Asians found at the ports in Long Beach and Oakland barely make the local section of LATimes or SFChron. That aside, OMEFFSMLOLSOB.
scav
If those Dugger women (“breed em till they break”) are so constantly full of the next quiver-addition but are nevertheless supposed to drop and spread on command, sure sounds like there’s a lot of recreational rather than recreating arrows seks going on. They’ve just gone for biodegradable blowups that also vacuum and cook. There’s that old-timey sacrament of marriage!
boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: If they were expecting Spanish, no doubt they were Saving the Heretics there from the evils of Catholicism.
/snark(maybe)
Howard Beale IV
@The Other Chuck: The Lobotomy Channel
Trollhattan
The Bogg has been very helpful in steering me well clear of these [evidently unused] douchenozzles. As I remind my kid daily, reality shows exist to give you people to feel superior to, and this clan is certainly no exception.
drkrick
I thought it was the first kiss that was kept private – they didn’t kiss in the usual spot in the ceremony. Because my wife has some soft of morbid interest in the show, I can tell you that because of the way that first kiss is built up, the men at QF wedding ceremonies hoot and holler like frat brothers watching porn when the big moment comes, so I don’t blame Jessa and her master-to-be for passing on that experience.
Betty Cracker
I’m not a big fan of the US drone program, but if they started targeting Kardashian and Duggar wedding parties, I might change my mind.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Spot on.
Again.
JPL
Since the Supremes have decided to hear arguments about federal subsidies and health care, what are the odds that Roberts says it is a simple legislative fix.
Mike J
@scav: Traditional marriage is one man and as many twelve year olds as he can buy.
MomSense
@JPL:
I am trying to ignore this piece of news today. I hate feeling like my life is in the hands of the four assholes and whatever mood that fifth one is in when he makes his decision.
Wally Ballou
Quiver Full of Snark is a site worth checking out, btw.
schrodinger's cat
I used to watch WNTW on TLC back in the day. I miss Stacie and Clinton.
gogol's wife
This is how bad I am. In my assiduous reading of People magazine, I noticed the “baby bump” on the last Duggar daughter to get married appeared about two weeks after the wedding. She got that from “side hugs”?
Trentrunner
Re SCOTUS taking up ACA subsidies, I came here hoping Richard will tell us IT WILL ALL BE FINE, but I have a feeling it won’t.
Over at GOS, they’re already in a full-on cycle of Blame Obama First, what with his corporatist Rube-Golberg machine of a plan; what did he expect?
Shame about the millions who will lose health coverage, though.
Cacti
@JPL:
I think the honorable Chief Justice is going to think long and hard about how to rule in a way most beneficial to the newly elected Republican legislature.
If he simply votes to toss it, the overwhelming majority of the states without an exchange are red. Some of blue states without them also include presidential aspirants like Walker and Christie.
Bmaccnm
Because I was awake last night, I allowed myself to get sucked into a People magazine comment section about the latest one’s wedding. It was 3 am and raining in Portland. Don’t judge me!! It was like a stroll through a completely different culture. I was struck by the number of semi-literate people praising this family to their high heavens. “Moral people” “All the children are happy all the time” “They don’t use welfare like those (insert word indicating people who don’t look like the writer) in the inner city” “I bet you like the Kardashians” “All you liberals want everyone to use drugs and be homosexuals, then you would be happy” And the other comments “Good for them. They keep the race alive.” I had to back out of the alley after an hour or so, but it went on for a bout 2000 comments. It gave me an understanding of what happened in this country on Tuesday. Apparently, there are a number of binary thinkers out there with limited reasoning skills, limited literacy, as ascertained by their writing skills, and a strong idea of how things ought to be. I left the morass feeling fairly down about the future.
Amir Khalid
@gogol’s wife:
I am shocked to learn that you read People magazine assiduously. That a Duggar daughter was already in a family way at her wedding — eh, not so much.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: The thing is, in order to not toss it, all he has to do is apply basic statutory interpretation rules; it is the easier opinion to write. To toss it, he would have to make shit up and try to sound plausible.
schrodinger's cat
Thread needs philosophical kitteh
JPL
@Cacti: Roberts will simply say, it’s an easy fix for Congress to make and walk or of court whistling. .
SatanicPanic
I know they’re breeding like hell, but how many of these Quiverfull cranks are there really? A few thousand?
Bmaccnm
Make that number a majority of binary thinkers.
A Humble Lurker
Here.
This place gives something of an inside scoop on these types of movements. It’s a goddamn nightmare, and goes far beyond ‘eccentricity’.
Mnemosyne
@Bmaccnm:
IIRC, until they got their TV deal with TLC, the whole family was on welfare. So I guess what all of those people in the inner city need to do is sign multi-year TV contracts to do reality shows and all of their problems will be solved!
gogol's wife
@Amir Khalid:
Here’s my justification: cardio machines are boring, I have to read while on them, and People is the perfect combination of readability and mindlessness. The New Yorker is too hard and has small print, Us Weekly is just too inane even for me, Vanity Fair won’t stay open.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course, but that supposes the Republican 5 of SCOTUS will exercise their duties in good faith. For at least 3 of them, we can be sure that they won’t.
Suffern ACE
@Trentrunner: Why do I also think that there will be five justices who’ll punt on the same sex marraige ruling, effectively ending the courts as a way of protecting any rights that aren’t “specifically listed or thought up 200 years ago.”
Ruviana
I love “TheWorldisRoses” aka Ashleigh. I’m still not sure if she’s a parody site or for realz. She got into a blogwar with another, actual patriarchy/headship blogger a while back (not going to track it down) and that seemed like a bridge too far for a parody. On the other hand, DougJ isn’t as active here these days….
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
I prefer the inanity of Us, myself. People tries to do Important Stories on murders or disasters sometimes and they get a little ponderous for me.
Don
Oh, I’m sure the subsidies will be fine since these strict original intent people will recognize that this distinction between federal and state-run exchanges was never planned by the lawmakers. No way they’d break from that strongly held principle just because it’s convenient.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: We are in agreement. Anywhere from 6-3 pro to 5-4 con.
Kay
This is a blog for “survivors” (their term) of this life. It’s really pretty fascinating. It’s a whole culture. They talk about the Duggars quite a bit on the blog. One thing that say a lot is that there are “two” kitchens, the one they show on the set and… another one? I don’t know why they focus so on the kitchen deception, but it really seems to get to them.
It’s earnest and some of the posts are wonderful. When they leave the lifestyle they have to get training and find work, so they sometimes go on to community colleges, etc. It’s really hard for them, because they’ve been told these horrible things about public ed, the world outside, etc.
It’s two-fold, a double whammy, because they have been told we’re horrible, but they’ve also been told they’re wildly superior: better educated, harder working. It’s a huge adjustment to reality, really. The education piece is a little heartbreaking, because often their “grades” had nothing to do with any ordinary measure and they just hit that like a brick wall.
danielx
@gogol’s wife:
How cynical! It is a well known fact that an eager young Christian bride can accomplish in six months what takes nine for cow or countess.
GxB
Last time I was in for a haircut, the guy in the chair next to me was a chatterbox with his stylist. He bragged it up that he already had six and another on the way. From their conversation, both he and the stylist we’re struggling financially but their word choices indicated they both voted Republican religiously.
I’m glad they finished up before the conversation turned really ugly. Nothing like being a captive audience to derp.
Sigh.
Belafon
@gogol’s wife: A ten inch kindle works great for me.
danielx
Browsing through Raw Story, I came across a photo of a new Senator-elect from (where else?) Oklahoma, who sez his “biblical worldview” will guide his actions in the upper chamber. Of course it will, I’d expect nothing less. However…
If there was ever a man whose appearance screamed “douche canoe” louder, I’ve never seen him.
Waldo
For me, any mention of the Duggars immediately calls to mind these immortal lines from Harvey Danger:
Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don’t even own a TV
schrodinger's cat
What is so disgusting about the Quiverfull ideology and its ideological siblings in other religions is that older children, especially the female ones end up having to take care of the younger siblings when they are little more than children themselves.
Belafon
@Suffern ACE: We’re not going to get back to 1910 easily if it’s left up to the Republican led Congress.
SatanicPanic
@danielx: oh god I want to punch that face
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon: 1910? don’t you mean 1810?
Belafon
@schrodinger’s cat: I doubt they want to go that far back. Actually having to house slaves on your own property is too expensive. Better to let them think they’re living on the own.
Alex S.
The Duggars need to breed faster, the Palestinians are catching up with the Israelis.
HR Progressive
These people make my blood boil; Primarily because they are enabled and fluffed by TLC as some sort of wacky, wholesome family that just happens to be much bigger than yours…
But their motives are as dark and nefarious as anything that doesn’t involve physical violence as anything else.
These people are theocratic whackjobs, and the sooner the general public can stop paying attention to them, the better.
I really couldn’t give a shit less about their Puritanesque moral code, but it’s the “We believe in outpopulating the heathens and then overtaking them in public life and office” that is a giant fucking red flag.
These people basically want to rule the world, and nobody bats a fucking eye.
Our. Failed. Media. Experiment.
Trollhattan
@SatanicPanic:
There once were only a few Mormons. First fifteen minutes of “Idiocracy” should be required viewing for understanding this phenomenon.
Cacti
@danielx:
The Senate energy and science committees are both set to be chaired by climate change deniers (Inhofe and Cruz).
Belafon
@HR Progressive: Is there any progressive family willing to have 20 kids and provide entertainment to the masses?
GxB
@danielx: Ah, an excellent example of Ingwerbackpfeifengesicht.
ETA: Cacti-The Senate energy and science committees are both set to be chaired by climate change deniers (Inhofe and Cruz).
Going to be some real rough skidding for the foreseeable future, but we already knew that.
Mnemosyne
@A Humble Lurker:
To schrodinger’s cat’s point, I think Libby Anne’s posts about her experiences as one of the oldest siblings are some of her best pieces. She was told that doing this work would prepare her to be a mother, but she realizes now that it only prepared her to be a child manager. She knew how to efficiently change a diaper, bathe a baby, and herd toddlers, but she knew nothing about how to actually parent.
@Belafon:
They have slaves — their children. The kids are not only supposed to be under parental control while living with them, they’re supposed to continue to defer to their parents even after getting married and having children of their own. It’s pretty horrifying.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
Growing up I had a friend who was 1 of 13 children. Being from a small family, I loved visiting their house because it was so busy and interesting. Many years later I found myself sitting next to one of the older sisters at a bar after a memorial service. Wow did she shatter my illusions about being in a big family. She resented having to become a parent at age 11 and felt guilty about resenting it.
Belafon
@Mnemosyne: I think we may be talking about two different things. I was talking about the Roberts court decisions and whether they are trying to take us back to 1910 or 1810.
kindness
We need to change the tax code so that parents can only write off 2 dependents.
Right now I’m paying for the asshole Dugger’s kids and I resent it.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: My grandmother had nine brothers and two sisters, these were the children that survived. She was the second child, she ended up having to run the house, because mom was always pregnant. At least, they were well off so she had plenty of help but even so, she never really got to be a child.
ETA: Grandma only had three kids, and my mother who was the youngest was really an unexpected child born when both parents were in their forties.
Both my mother’s siblings are more than a decade older than her.
SatanicPanic
@Trollhattan: So did the People’s Temple.
I enjoyed Idiocracy, but the idea that we’re going to breed a huge army of stupid people has never made sense to me. By any measure we’re smarter than we’ve ever been. Seems very classist.
Mnemosyne
@Belafon:
Sorry, got confused since there are two different conversations going on at the same time. Carry on!
Cacti
@MomSense:
My upbringing allowed me to see both sides of it. I came from an average sized family (3 kids), but was raised Mormon and had lots of friends who came from families with 7-10 kids. I never saw a large family where the drudgery of diaper changes, feedings, etc. didn’t get pushed off on the older kids when Mom and Dad were getting near the end of the line. But I’m sure they were also exhausted from continuing to pop out young kids from a sense of religious duty, long after they had lost the energy for all of the responsibilities of parenting young kids.
I also remember how miserable a lot of the mothers seemed, and how they grew old before their time after spending a decade or more in a near constant state of pregnancy.
Not surprisingly, Utah leads the nation in per capita antidepressant medication usage.
raven
Washington (CNN) — President Barack Obama is sending up 1,500 more soldiers to Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces to fight ISIS, bringing the total number of American troops there to 2,900.
The White House said in a statement that it will also ask Congress for another $5.6 billion dollars to fund the fight against ISIS. The troops will not have a combat role, and will operate from bases outside Baghdad and Erbil.
“The President took these decisions at the request of the Iraqi Government and upon the recommendation of Secretary Hagel and his military commanders based upon the assessed needs of the Iraqi Security Forces,” the statement said.
MaryRC
@drkrick: It is a kind of porn. The Duggars’ reality show has been on TLC for the past 6 years, but never became as popular as it is now until the three oldest daughters became old enough to be “courted”.
The Duggars place so much emphasis on avoiding sex — courting couples can’t kiss or even frontally hug, because boobs, I guess; couples are chaperoned by another famiy member at all times, so a young couple can’t even go to the store to pick out their bridal registry items without takng her little brother along — that eventually it becomes all about sex.
In the first few years it was all about how many loaves of bread and jugs of milk you had to buy to feed all those kids but no-one was really interested. Now it’s about these pretty young things who are panting to be ravished but have to waaaiiiitttt, and the show has its highest ratings ever.
schrodinger's cat
@MaryRC: Sounds pornographic!
shelley
Duggar Senior definitely has the crazy eyes! Remember they were on a cross-over appearance on one of tht channel’s other shows. Of all things, ‘Say Yes To The Dress.” They were renewing their vows or something so Mama Duggar was dragged in to pick something special. What they finally picked was , of course, a huge tent that went from chin to her toes. Unlike so many of the other store’s customers, she did not cry when she found her ‘dream dress.’
jonas
I can’t help but think that, at least statistically speaking, at least one or two of that Duggar clan have to be gay.
schrodinger's cat
@shelley: I remember seeing that episode. I don’t profess to understand the Duggers and I never understood the crying brides when they found the “dress” either. Also too, spending elebenty munnies for something you only wear once.
Trollhattan
@SatanicPanic:
Was Jim Jones big into the procreation-by-the-score thing? Long enough ago now I don’t recall.
Now, David Koresh was certainly willing to do “his part.”
Wally Ballou
@MaryRC: Funny how prudery and prurience almost always go hand in hand. One might almost say they’re opposite sides of the same psycho-sexual coin.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@MomSense: Not limited to big families. Anyone who’s parents divorced at a young age gets to have this
wonderful, life-fulfillingtotally fucked experience. My dad bailed, my mom had to do double shifts, we got a pittance for child support (thanks, Judge Dickhead) and so I raised my little brother from age 11 until around my sophomore year of high school, when my mom’s education paid off and we stopped living on the ragged edge of poverty.To this day I bitterly resent having to cook a meal. Same thing happened to my wife and she came out with many of the same issues. Our kitchen is the least-used room in the house.
ETA: Also, as a direct consequence of our experiences, both my wife and I were dead set against having any kids whatsoever. And we haven’t. And will not. Been there, done that, fuck that. If our parents wanted grandchildren they should have behaved better.
Helen
@shelley: That episode was awesome. Mamma Dugger also would not let the sales clerk (a woman) into the dressing room while she changed. The sales clerk just sat outside the room talking about the bizzareness of it all.
Good Times.
EriktheRed
Uh, no…
I read about it enough on Wonkette. I’ll pass, thank you.
danielx
@MaryRC:
@Wally Ballou:
Yup. Seriously repressed folks in the red states. Greatest consumption of on line porn there too. And it always seems to be those places from whence the most lurid political/sexual scandals arise…think Diaper Dave Vitter, from the Gret Stet of Louisiana.
Edit: Might have something to do with why males of the quiverfull persuasion are rumored to be a mite quick on the trigger, as they say…
cckids
@MomSense:
Agreed. I’m almost glad for Nevada’s complete clusterf*ck of a website/program – we signed up, paid premiums for 3 months, then after having our first doctor’s appointments & tests in 5 years, found out we weren’t insured after all. Xerox managed to completely screw it up & screw over loads of people who found themselves in the same boat as us.
It will be turned over to the feds in November for signups, but now? Who knows? I just cannot get my hopes up anymore. I’ve been without insurance & medical care since 2005, why stop now. Only 13 years to go until Medicare kicks in.
Yay.
ET
Was reading Kevin Drum’s Friday cat blogging and I am going to try the cat in a circle trick this weekend and see if my falls for it.
danielx
If you can stand it, some TBogg commentary on the, ah, practices and principles of the Duggar baby machine/factory and Quiverfull marriages in general..
Ready to have some Duggar sexytime tips shoved down your throat? Of course you are…
danielx
@SatanicPanic:
backpfeifengesicht: a face that cries out for a fist.
Turgidson
Oh boy, the Duggars. How they disgust me. My wife watches that show whenever I’m not around to angrily demand that the channel be changed, and sometimes when I’m in the same room as the TV but zoning out on the laptop or with headphones on (she hates that I do that, particularly when she wants to tell me about her day when I get home from work and I’m too tired or preoccupied to remember to ask or listen sufficiently attentively, and Duggar-time is her unspoken way of saying “cut that shit out.” I’m generally a pretty good listener and husband, but I have my bad days, and if I string two or three together in the same week, I guess I deserve to get called out and/or Duggar’ed. Anyway.)
She’s a psychologist and therefore finds strange people endlessly fascinating, even as she’s well aware of how dangerously loony their beliefs, and aggressive propagation of same, are. She used to have the same inexplicable (to me) fascination with the f’ing Kardashians, but either they eventually became boring to her, or my ongoing campaign to shame her out of watching them finally succeeded. I’m trying to do the same wrt the Duggars, but no luck so far. Maybe she’ll decide on the right DSM diagnosis for these wackjobs and move on. I sure hope so.
'Niques
@HR Progressive: I always look at the big picture . . . our species will not survive with these people at the helm. I predict a culling of the herd. Not in my lifetime, of course, or for many generations to come, but eventually . . . “you, out of the gene pool!”
Mnemosyne
@Turgidson:
I can see why they would be fascinating case studies for a psychologist or a sociologist. I’m not sure what anyone else’s excuse would be.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Watching a train wreck in a slo-mo?
pseudonymous in nc
@Mnemosyne:
I do know that Daddy Duggar claimed part of his house as a church for the tax bennies. And wingnut welfare apparently doesn’t count either.
Somehow I doubt that Statistically Very Likely Gay Duggar will get any of that.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
Having 19 kids is nuts.
Quiverful is creepy.
The partriarchism is creepy.
All those Stepford kids are creepy.
To sum up, the Duggars are nutty and creepy.
Jebediah, RBG
@Turgidson:
NO ONE deserves a Duggaring.
schrodinger's cat
@pseudonymous in nc: Wasn’t he a Congresscritter at some point?
7
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Arkansas state legislator.
Arclite
From Dan’s blog:
So true.
rikyrah
I simply don’t understand why anyone would want to watch their reality show. They are creepy
PurpleGirl
I find it hard to believe that I first saw The Silk Road on The Learning Channel, up teenth years ago.
PurpleGirl
…that Jessa and her new husband were so hot for each other that they retreated to a side room in the church and consummated the marriage.
I didn’t look at the site but this woould be in line with (Orthodox) Jewish marriage ritual. In the time between the marriage ceremony and the start of the reception/party, the new couple will retired to their own room for refreshment and rest. It is also a time for the couple to get to know each other and in some cases to consummate the marriage for the first time.
Another Holocene Human
@danielx: Some have suggested he dyes his hair, that’s it’s really gray already. Hiding the gray with a shitty bottle dye is pretty douchecanoe for starters, before you get to the inevitable pork pie hat and polyester suit politics.
ETA: shit, I think I said pork pie hat because of RAMONA. Not sure what I mean but I guess the Trilby is the most loathable hat these days, those are worn with a polyester sweater two sizes too small … wow, I’m drifting here
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Some amount of elder child childcare makes you very prepared for babby later in life. Too much makes you never want to have kids ever.
I split the difference … I visit my friends’ kids and then I go home. I’ve also taught my best tricks to my godsons’ parents. They were an only child and the baby of a large family and TOTALLY not prepared for babby.
Another Holocene Human
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
This is me and my spouse, except with cleaning. In my wife’s case it was intergenerational (ugly divorce and guess what? the little woman had given up her PhD program for him, and being an adjunct doesn’t pay, not even 20 years ago), in my case insane narcissistic parent who treated children as dolls/slaves/meat puppets. I love cleaning things but only if no humans are around. Minute someone is looking at me the rage and resentment return in force.
ETA: I wish my parents would have divorced. My wife doesn’t mind that her parents divorced but it would have been nice if wife #2 hadn’t declared war on her mom. She turned into the pint-sized battleground for both sides’ proxy war for a while there.
Another Holocene Human
@Turgidson: The Kardashians are the perfect gym show. There is no increased blood flow to the brain and it’s so perfectly balanced between movement and neutrality that it keeps that kind alert, peppy but not distracting vibe you need to push a few more dynes at the gym.
The kind of people who have it on at home don’t seem to in my experience actually sit and watch it, it’s on while they do other things.
psychobroad
@Turgidson: It’s a guilty pleasure, at least for me!