Are the Duggars more concerned about their TV show than their children?
Jim Bob and Michelle’s attempts at mitigation make a sad situation even sadder.
The Duggar’s Wednesday night interview on FOX News made it clear that they have been expertly coached in what to say to make their horrible situation slightly more palatable to the American public.
Because while TLC has yanked their show, 19 Kids and Counting, from the air for now, the network hasn’t completely cancelled it. At least not yet. So if the Duggars—whose son Josh molested four of his sisters and a babysitter—come out of this interview alive, they could hypothetically still be on television.
“I don’t know whether the rest of our family should be punished’’ for Josh’s actions, Jim Bob said, in a not-so-veiled attempt to gain sympathy and hold on to his platform.
The basic truth here is that a human tragedy has unfolded under Jim Bob and Michelle. It’s deeply sad that any of the molestation occurred, that the Duggars handled it the way they did at the time, and that they’re handling it the way they are now. Regardless of how crazy they may be, it’s real people’s lives we’re talking about. A boy violated his sisters. And now their darkest days are being splashed across covers and screens.
Unfortunately, the parents seem mostly concerned with saving their brand rather than their children.
Gawker put together a list of 19 excuses Jim Bob and Michelle deploy throughout the interview, including Jim Bob’s attempts at normalizing the situation: “But as we’ve talked to other parents and different ones since then, a lot of families since said that they’ve had similar things happen in their families.’’ (Which raises the question of whom in God’s name the Duggars hang out with, but that’s a whole different article.)
Among the other 18 excuses is Michele’s assertion that none of the girls knew they’d been molested because they were sleeping at the time and Josh touched them under their clothes. Even though the Duggars themselves later admit that Josh did touch the girls under their clothes sometimes, and that the girls weren’t always asleep.
Jim Bob says at one point, “This was not rape or anything like that.’’ Actually, Jim Bob, it was something like that.
The Duggars have thrown their lot in with ultra-conservative America. They share a PR guy with former Fox news anchor and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Hucakbee (the same Mike Huckabee who said, in light of Caitlyn Jenner’s unveiling, that he wishes he could’ve identified as a woman in high school so he could shower in the girl’s locker room). They are staunchly anti-abortion and anti-gay rights, and they petitioned to forbid transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their self-identified gender.
So you could come at them for hypocrisy. They think it’s dangerous to have transgender people in bathrooms with young girls, but their own son repeatedly molested his sisters and they didn’t remove him from the home until the third time.
But it’s clear that these people are so fundamentally off their rockers that to give them the benefit of logic and reasoning doesn’t even make sense. It would mean trying to unpack the unpackable. It would be trying to reason with someone on an entirely different plane.
At the end of the day, the only thing left to say is that this whole situation is just so sad.
And the Duggar’s attempts at mitigation to appeal to the American public and save their TV show are even sadder.
The Duggar family:
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