Whether you are a fan of the Duggars or not the fact that juvenile records were somehow released to the public is horrible and especially for the victims who were minors at the time the events took place.
I think it was probably a bad idea for the family to start filming a reality show in the first place. From what I understand the abuse took place just a short time before filming began. Anyone who signs up to be a public figure takes a huge risk that someone will do anything to dig up dirt on you. They shouldn't have taken that risk for 5 young girls. The girls deserved to be protected from the very thing that has happened to them now.
I hope that this doesn't become political fodder for those who want to attack the conservative right. I'm a liberal democrat but a line has to be drawn when it comes to innocent victims. They aren't running for office and they don't deserve to be used as ammunition.
No News
1 month ago
3 comments:
My opinion is that the current situation is the fault of the parents. They should not have started their show with this hanging over their heads; they should have reported it immediately instead of waiting. And perhaps they should not have donated so much money to conservative republicans and pretended to be lily white- since that usually means that you will bear the brunt of bad publicity when crap happens. I do feel sorry for the girls, but it is the parents fault.
I agree that it's the parents' fault. However, when the story was released, it is my understanding that it did not name the Duggar family, but it was pretty obvious who they were reporting on. Also, the media didn't identify the girls. Their parents were the ones who named them. And, now, it's pretty obvious that the daughters have been coached on what to say to reporters. These people are simply disreputable. I noticed that even Mike Huckabee has scrubbed his own Facebook page. There isn't any mention of the Duggars, now.
I think much of the show's appeal was due to Michelle's obvious delight in her children, in the longing for a time when six and seven year olds weren't dressed like prostitutes for their first day of school, when children didn't swear and use obscene language, but cared for each other. It was the way we like to believe things were in Grandma's day. And compared to horror shows like Honey-Boo-Boo and those ghastly "child beauty pageants" the sweetness and modesty of the Duggar girls was lovely.
But remember that these are children who were not exposed to television and movies, no writhing music videos with their vulgar and explicit lyrics, who had no unsupervised exposure to the outside world, and as Joshua said, he was curious about girls, which is a trait shared by most boys in puberty.
I'm not excusing what he did, or how his parents handled it. For one thing it could probably been avoided entirely had his parents begun educating him, and all their children, about their own, and the opposite genders' anatomy, *long before puberty*, as part of "Health classes". Here's how your body works." When you don't kids start seeking answers to their questions themselves. In some American cities 8-9% of kids have had sex by the time they are 12!
As is, their mistake is going to cost them dearly. Jim-Bob will have to go back to selling used cars. He began by misrepresenting his flawed family as the Godly Ideal. He could have come on and said, "We've faced some challenges, everyone knows parenting is not easy. Even when you do your best, you sometimes fail. We have a big challenge right now. To protect the privacy of our children we aren't going to say what that problem is, or who is involved, but we aren't going to pretend we're perfect. We feel we've failed as parents, and we're going to get some counselling to learn what we could do differently. We ask for your prayers, as we go forward, and recommit ourselves to God and our children."
No one would have turned away. People are drawn to true vulnerability and humility. Not BS, scratch a little topsoil over it, and hope the grass will cover it, but it would have been better example than this, which has to have been heart-wrenching for the entire family. I haven't watched them in years, I don't agree with their children by the carton philosophy, but I do admire Michelle's incredible spirit, organizational ability, and her patience.
I think she and her husband made some incredibly poor decisions, but in context, the 1st show was supposed to be a one-of in a series about couples with a dozen or more children, and the camera and the audience just loved them, so there was a second show a year later… and I think like Topsy it just grew, and probably it was only *at the point where it was being turned into a series* that they took the "problem" to the police.
I hope this doesn't become political. But I also hope Jim-Bob stops preaching intolerance and hatred against Gays; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
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