Getting the Duggar Interview out of My System

Sometimes I really want to leave a particular story be and just stop blogging about it, but something about it won't let me--the Duggars are that way. I never had any interest in their reality show because I basically think reality tv is a sign, in and of itself, of a kind of unhealthy exhibitionism. What's the pull in watching the day-to-day doings of your friendly next-door conservative Christian fertility cultists? The most I could sniff about is that a reality show is inherently exploitative, and that, since many of the children are minors--they don't really have the ability to knowingly consent to having their family's business aired. That these kids are otherwise very highly sheltered from what I would think of as "the world" never struck me as being as obviously a problem.  It's a bit easy to assume that the Duggar parents, however, have some idea of what they're doing.

It's easy enough for me, not being a parent, to snipe. But the interview revealed certain things (Salon uses the term "horrifying"--which only seems sensational until you think about the context) that make me genuinely wonder what they think they are sheltering their children from. Because among the things they actually said out loud where people could hear is that they compared notes with other families and what Josh Duggar did wasn't that bad.

I am assuming they did not join a support group, where one might expect to find people with similar experiences, but they just happen to be around people who have their kids feeling up on each other. Their homeschooling mentor Bill Gothard was a serial sexual harasser and the law enforcement officer they turned to to give their son a stern talking-to was deep into the child porn.

Do these people know anyone with a healthy concept of sexual boundaries?

No "Insensitive Bloodthirst" for the Duggars

 

It's hard to read former AR Governor Mike Huckabee's Facebook post regarding the revelation that the oldest Duggar son, Josh, molested 5 young girls over a period of a couple years, without wondering if it's entirely appropriate just yet to voice quite this kind of defense:



...Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things. The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today’s blood-thirsty media does not understand—that being a minor means that one's judgement is not mature. No one needs to defend Josh’s actions as a teenager, but the fact that he confessed his sins to those he harmed, sought help, and has gone forward to live a responsible and circumspect life as an adult is testament to his family’s authenticity and humility. Those who have enjoyed revealing this long ago sins in order to discredit the Duggar family have actually revealed their own insensitive bloodthirst, for there was no consideration of the fact that the victims wanted this to be left in the past and ultimately a judge had the information on file destroyed—not to protect Josh, but the innocent victims....

I can't say that I know any better than Mike Huckabee whether any of the victims preferred this be kept quiet, but I do know that this family has made their lives, or a version thereof, very public, and they were foolish if they did not suppose that it would not come to light. If they did not know in 2003, when Jim Bob Duggar got around to a half-assed job of reporting it, then by 2006, when Oprah jettisoned them and contacted a child abuse hotline, they should have realized that other people knew about it. There's expressions of disbelief and disappointment and a not-un-smug satisfaction in pointing out the hypocrisy of pointing a finger at, say, gay couple-helmed families, or spreading actually harmful lies about trans* people, when no, the child-predator sometimes looks like a virtual child himself, from a solidly Christian family, being sent their way--but no evil intent.