Megyn Kelly promises us she's just going to let the Duggars "tell their story" not "cross examine" them like there's some kind of crime.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) June 2, 2015
It's interesting how infrequently the fact that Jim Bob Duggar is a Republican politician is mentioned.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) June 2, 2015
Yes, it’s gross and stomach-turning, but there are real victims here and they ain’t the candidates who were happy to share the spotlights with a C-level reality-show ‘celebrity’ and certified Repub-endorsing godbotherer. Per TPM:
Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Monday night bashed media coverage of the Duggar family following allegations that Josh Duggar molested underage girls while he was a teenager.
After playing a CNN clip noting that several Republicans have posed for pictures with Josh Duggar in the past, Kelly lambasted the media for “trying to make this the problem of the Republican presidential field.”…
Fox’s Howard Kurtz, a guest on “The Kelly File,” said he was “disgusted by how some liberal media types are using what’s obviously a family tragedy to score political points.”
Kelly then lamented that law enforcement leaked Josh Duggar’s juvenile police records and criticized members of the media for still reporting heavily on the allegations…
Kelly also previewed her Wednesday interview with the Duggar family…
Give Kelly points for professionalism, by Fox News standards: She’s decried and refudiated the ‘cruel treatment’ of these poor misunderstood Christians, but if further details emerge that cause even stalwarts like Mike Hucksterbee to scuttle away, well, she showed you the pictures, she reported the controversy…
Below the fold — trigger warning — stories from someone who knows all too well what it’s like to be in the situation of the Duggar daughters…
Libby Anne, at Patheos, on “the silencing power of forgiveness“:
… Anna Duggar (Josh’s wife) is an example of what many women coming out of the Duggar’s fundamentalist Christian subculture go through. They get married young after a brief courtship. (Because of family pressure and perhaps a desperate need to get out of their parents’ home.) They don’t really know the person they are marrying, and they are too inexperienced (having no sex ed, previous boyfriends, or real-world experience) to recognize any red flags that might have risen by this point. They can’t use birth control (because sinful) so they start having children right away.
Anna now has three, with a fourth on the way. She is 26 years old. She was homeschooled her whole life and never went to college. She now claims that she knew when the courtship began that Josh was a child molester. But I very much doubt that Josh used those words — it is far more likely that he said he had “temptations” to which he “succumbed” but “God is good” and he has “asked for forgiveness.” And, in that culture, she would have had no choice but to accept that for face value, because to do otherwise would be to call Josh a liar and to doubt God’s ability to save. Now she’s found out the truth, she has a few more years of experience, and she’s more trapped than she’s ever been…
From Libby Anne’s archives, back in 2012: “Carefully scripted lives: My concerns about the Duggars” :
… The fact is, the Duggars aren’t just your ordinary family plus seventeen extra children. There is a great deal of editing that goes into making TV, and one thing that gets edited out are the Duggars’ religious beliefs and their beliefs about child rearing. There is much, much more going on here than you see on TV.
I know this because I grew up in a family very much like the Duggars. We had a third fewer kids and we didn’t have a TV show, but otherwise it was about the same. Our beliefs were nearly identical to theirs, as was our way of living. When I look at the older Duggar girls, I see myself. I was them. With that in mind, I’m going to take a moment to outline nine specific concerns I have about the Duggars.
1. Isolation and Indoctrination
The Duggar childern are homeschooled in part in order to shelter them from bad influences, i.e. from other kids and teachers who hold different beliefs or live different sorts of lives. The Duggar kids don’t have friends who aren’t pre-approved by their parents. In fact, the Duggar kids aren’t even involved in church activities – their family participates in a “home church” where they and several other like-minded families get together on Sunday mornings and worship together.Furthermore, even the older Duggar children are not allowed to go anywhere without having an “accountability partner,” i.e. another sibling, to keep tabs on them. When one of the older boys volunteered at the local fire department, one of his sisters always went with him to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t get in trouble…
2. Children raising children
If you think Michelle is the one raising all of those kids, think again. Those older daughters, some of them already adults, are the ones who are actually doing the majority of the cooking, cleaning, and childcare. They are, in effect, raising their younger siblings.Now I’m not saying Michelle sits back and watches soap operas while the kids work, but rather that with that many children there is simply too much for her to do on her own. She doesn’t have the time or energy to raise her children without her older daughters’ help. And fortunately, because the Duggars homeschool, those older daughters are available to help 24/7…
3. Authoritarian discipline
Though they have not directly admitted it, there is a lot to indicate that the Duggars follow Michael and Debi Pearl’s discipline methods. This means they require absolute obedience from their children and see even bad attitudes as signs of disobedience. It also means they use corporal punishment. The Pearls suggest that you begin to spank your children at around six months, and they urge parents to spank a disobedient child until that child submits completely…The Duggars have stated that they use blanket training. What they do is place a baby on a blanket and tell the baby not to get off. If the baby crawls off, he or she is spanked on the leg, told “no,” and placed back on the blanket. If you do this for long enough, the baby will learn to stay on the blanket, and then you can safely leave the baby there while you cook lunch or school the older ones. This all seems counter to the nature of a naturally curious baby…
If you wonder why the Duggar girls never spoke up, despite having an “audience” of TV-millions, it’s because they’ve been physically disciplined since they were infants to believe that resistance is futile.
Further reading, if you need it: Gawker has “The Duggar Homeschool Program’s Terrifying Advice on Sexual Assault.”
Imagine if the Duggars followed some “un-American” religious cult — say, one that mandated forcing their daughters to wear headscarves instead of horrible 80s perms. Fox News would be encouraging every Christianist wingnut on the internet to go wave placards and second-Amendment totems at the family compound, and the GOP candidates who let Josh massage their egos for the cameras would be calling for Benghazi-scale investigations into whether President Obama once shook hands with a third cousin of the patriarch’s assistant at the family used-car dealership.
Villago Delenda Est
Megyn Kelly and Howard Kurtz both need to be voted off the planet.
Along with the entire twisted, damaged Duggar cult, and all the other “quiverfull” cultists.
As for the Rethuglicans, well, every last one of them went out of their way, it seems, to pose with Josh the sister molester. They’ve got no one to blame but themselves.
David Koch
anyone see Larry Wilmore last night. he had clips of Brit Hume screaming that Hastert was being persecuted, not prosecuted, but persecuted by Obama. When someone tried to point out a serious crime was committed he shouted her down.
of course, IOKIYAR – even abusing children.
NotMax
Have less interest in the Duggars than in toenail fungus.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Libby Anne also brought back her “two boxes” metaphor to explain why conservatives and liberals are talking past each other about this stuff:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/05/josh-duggar-and-the-tale-of-two-boxes.html
Short version: conservatives care about “married” vs “unmarried” while liberals care about “consensual” vs “non-consensual.” Conservatives really do think that gay people are the moral equivalent of child molesters because their moral “boxes” are not the same as ours.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing, though.
:)
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@NotMax:
True, I should have used their favorite word and said they really do *believe* that gay people and child molesters are morally equal because they all operate outside of marriage.
cckids
@David Koch: I’m liking Larry Wilmore’s show; he pulls very few punches. The format is getting tweaked & getting better. He’s a good host.
fuckwit
That is a great point… might even have been worth starting the post with it. Really, abuse is abuse, it doesn’t matter what religion people try to use to justify or excuse it, it’s still just as horrible.
David Koch
Here’s the link to the video (scroll down) :
Larry Wilmore hammers Fox News for defending Hastert
Narcissus
What the hell is a a volunteeer fire department going to do with a couple of useless Duggar spawn?
bago
Going to have to say, I feel some sympathy for Josh. When you grow up in a strict patriarchy with parents that demand that women must submit to the whims of men, I can see how an awkward teenager might make a mistake that seems unforgivable to anyone who was not similarly indoctrinated. The kid has to cleave to his family now because that’s his only gravy train, as without their help he’s just an uneducated guy with a shady past.
Now the patriarchs, who demand all of the tribute and respect for their works… THEY should be despised.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (tablet): They actually believe that gays molest more than straights. It’s junk science.
From the Southern Poverty Law Center:
I met Dr. Cameron when I was in high school, his son was my debate partner.
Major Major Major Major
Oh god oh god oh god oh god
ETA: posted and edited on mobile. Didn’t see the warning.
Thanks for the links
I was gonna drop by and link to my new chapter but
I’ve been raped and now I have to
Well I’ll probably post it soon as the CBT training kicks in
Aleta
http://youtu.be/BGbBQj-epzk
Aleta
@Aleta: @Aleta:
Meant for that song Hickory Wind to start at the beginning but the ipad does as it wants esp at this hour.
One more hateful sick hypocritical piece of the story is that TLC and the repubs who (in my mind) brought the Duggarts forward to carry votes in coming years, and fox, and the Christian politicos, and the media are all too happy to keep the focus on Josh. Who benefits most from the ‘joshie made a mistake’ talking point? There’s a lot being covered up. No disagreement that the girls above all are being sacrificed. And, so much duck feet paddling furiously under water to keep the mechanism alive to drive those votes. The twisted ‘forgiveness’ scam — a cult in itself that preys on women who want to be good at heart. It makes me sick to the core.
Chet
I don’t blame Megyn for being upset. Don’t they know that’s strictly for black people who get shot dead by the police?
Villago Delenda Est
@David Koch: As usual, Brit Hume is projecting. Everything he accuses the “liberal media” of doing the propagandists of Faux Noise do as a matter of routine.
MattF
I suspect the FOXies see the Duggars as their media-cousins– same audience, same medium, same politics. Got to defend the Family.
Xboxershorts
@NotMax:
I dunno, I kinda think we should be keenly aware of what the Duggars and the Quiverfull Movement is doing. Because they’re actively infiltrating our government and they’ve made very serious inroads in the past 3 decades.
Princess
@Xboxershorts: I agree completely. I used to think that the Duggars were marginal whacko reality-TV inventions. Okay, they are that too, but they are also one of the things at the core of the political problems in this country. They are the face of what the GOP wants to turn us into — undereducated (and therefore will work for cheap), docile, subservient folk who will do what our leaders, be they the family patriarch or the government or the boss, tell us to do. The more light shone on this family, the better.
sm*t cl*de
“Courtship”? FFS. Their families negotiated the bride-price when they were 14. Then her father broke off the “betrothal” after the first rape disclosure, until the deal was renegotiated around “forgiveness”
and pay-offs.Or the fact that Josh was a Republican bag-man.
Apart from that, why is anyone linking them to the Republican party?
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
I had to wait until this morning to read it. I hope you are ok.
Dammit these Duggars–just the child rearing techniques minus the sexual assault sound horrible.
VOR
@Chet: Nobody leaked the records. There was an FOI request made through proper legal channels.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Major Major Major Major:
Aw cripes. Hope you’re doing better.
Jado
Here’s a hypothetical – one of the younger girls gets fed up and slices Josh’s face up, but then feels remorse and asks for God’s forgiveness, and asks Josh for forgiveness…
How high are the flames they burn her in? Do they stack the wood up high, or do they just douse her with gas before the big Purification Ritual?
boatboy_srq
More like “one of many significant problems for the entire Grand Old Party.” If you’re in effect playing apologist for inc3st and child abuse in small closed communities (the Duggar clan is too big to be a “family” and too small to be a town), then the fact that that you’re getting bad publicity is a minor issue.
@Princess:
Don’t forget that “undereducated” also means that they won’t notice all the high-end jobs being offshored or outsourced to international contractors because they can’t meet the requirements for those positions. Dumber, cheaper, deliberately excluded from the next generation of middle class, and distanced from all the Ahmurrcan Ingenyewitee™ that the Reichwing trumpets as what made Ahmurrca great. So they’re not only deliberately undereducated, but they’re (equally deliberately) provided with a basis for the resentment on which the GOTea feeds while denied the tools to address that on their own.
boatboy_srq
BLEEP. Last comment in moderation…
...now I try to be amused
A former coworker was the eldest of 14 children in a Catholic family, and she effectively raised many of her siblings. She had no kids of her own; she said she’d raised more than enough kids for a lifetime.
Chris
@sm*t cl*de:
Ironically enough, this is a thing that comes up constantly when the marriage practices of certain Muslim countries is under discussion, as proof that the entire religion is tainted and irredeemable.
But it’s all good, they’re Christian, so they just need more Jesus.
Paul in KY
Thank Jeebus I was never raised in one of these weirdo households. Feel very sorry for those who are/were.
Neldob
Jim-Bob Duggar, the face of the Republican brand. I still don’t see how these people get votes. Yech. Reminds me of the movie Deliverance.
Goblue72
Between Hume & Kelly, it’s quite clear – Fox News supports child molestation.
EthylEster
Who is this Bob Schooley dude and why is AL constantly quoting his twitter feed?
JustRuss
I’m sure we all remember how Ms. Kelly lambasted the media and Sara Palin for pointing out that Obama had once been under the same roof as Bill Ayers. Right? Anyone?
Also, if you want to get creeped out, here’s how the Duggars home-schooled about abuse:
http://www.motherjones.com/contributor/2015/05/holy-shit-how-duggars-homeschooling-curriculum-allegedly-dealt-sexual-abuse
fuckwit
@Paul in KY: Many if not most of us were, some generations back. That kind of life was the norm in the pioneer days in the USA (huge families, women forced to pop out more kids– workers!– every year, isolated out on the farm, kids raising kids, patriarchal absolutism). It was the norm in feudal times in Europe. It was the norm in ancient times in southern Europe and the levant. And it’s still the norm today in many countries in the middle east.
Sometimes I think we lose track of how NEW all this progressive scientific modernism is– maybe a hundred or two years, which is a blink of an eye in evolutionary time, and not even very long in historical time for most cultures who have a longer memory than ours.
Hal
There is no alleged with Josh Duggar. He admitted to molesting several people, including his own family members, and his father and mother covered it up long enough for the statue of limitations to expire on the original crimes.
Conservative media is amazing on this story. This is a total broken record on my part wondering how Megyn Kelly or any other conservative media person would cover this story if it was a Democrat or prominent liberal family. I’m sure she would be just as understanding. eye roll.
jc
Waaa, it’s so impolite to rub the God-botherers noses in their hypocrisy.
boatboy_srq
Moderated first time, so taming the language a little.
More like “one of many significant problems for the entire Grand Old Party.” If you’re in effect playing apologist for “keeping-it-in-the-family” and child ab#s3 in small closed communities (the Duggar clan is too big to be a “family” and too small to be a town), then the fact that that you’re getting bad publicity for it is a minor issue.
@Princess:
“Undereducated” also means that they won’t notice all the high-end jobs being offshored or outsourced to international contractors because they can’t meet the requirements for those positions. Dumber, cheaper, deliberately excluded from the next generation of middle class, and distanced from all the Ahmurrcan Ingenuity™ that the Reichwing trumpets as what made Ahmurrca™ great. So they’re not only deliberately undereducated, but they’re (equally deliberately) provided with a basis for the resentment on which the GOTea feeds, while denied the tools to address that on their own.
sm*t cl*de
I feel that “involuntary digital penetration” deserves a stronger word than “molest”. My part of the word, it’s called “rape”.
Aleta
@sm*t cl*de:
Thank you for saying this.
Aleta
I’ve observed Christianity being used as a way of healing from sexual assault and comfort from past pain. AND as a way of hiding assault. AND as a way of trapping women for use by abusers. It’s hard for me to know what to do, even how to talk supportively, without adding to a precarious situation.
Paul in KY
@fuckwit: Very good point there.
r€nato
@BillinGlendaleCA: You know that a few years back, Cameron was photographed at Miami airport returning from Europe with a young, model-looking hunk as his “assistant”, right?