Making Things Worse

So Megyn Kelly decided that it would be a good idea to have the molestation-enablers, Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar on for a friendly interview. I've embedded the video below, if you have the stomach for it. I didn't. I made it to about 1:20 before I had to turn it off, smash the monitor, or throw up. I turned it off.  Listening to this mother who clearly feels like the real victims here are herself, Jim-Bob and Josh was just too sickening.
Sample quote "The one ray of hope was Josh has a tender conscience and came to us himself."

 

Fortunately, Think Progress has someone with the iron constitution to view this sick trainwreck and report it to us.

Breaking his silence on Fox News, Jim Bob Duggar repeatedly minimized the actions of his son Josh, who sexually molested several of the Duggar daughters.
“He had gone in and just basically touched them over their clothes while they were sleeping. They didn’t even know he had done it,” Jim Bob said. Later Jim Bob admitted there “were a couple incidents where he touched them under their clothes, but it was like a few seconds.”

 Holy frickin Christmas cake!

If you're trying to salvage your family's reputation, this is pretty much the exact wrongest way to go about it.You could not show more callous disconcern for your daughters, who were victimized by your son under your roof. You're really going to try to minimize this? Oh, they were asleep, they didn't even know it happened. Because someone suddenly stroking your genutals is not something that would wake a person up.
Oh, and it doesn't really count because it was "over the clothes." He never , ever put his hands under their clothes. well. . . .

Hardly Everrrrrr!!!

I'd love to know how the Duggar parents would react if one of their daughters came home from a date and said "I got felt up, but don't worry, it was over the clothes, so I'm still pure!" I'm guessing that loophole doesn't apply to consensual feel-copping.

He emphasized that “this was not rape or anything like that.” 

  

Right, it wasn't "Rape" rape! What's the big deal?

Throughout the interview, Jim Bob returned to these themes. He emphasized again and again that some of the instances occured while his daughters were sleeping and the molestation occured over their clothes. (At the same time he acknowledged that, in other cases, his daughters were awake and groped underneath their clothes.) Jim Bob also attempted to characterize Josh’s behavior as commonplace. “We talked to other parents and different ones since then, a lot of families have said that they’ve had similar things happen in their families,” he said.

   

Seriously? This is a common occurrence in your circles?
How could that possibly. . . oh, right. Weirdo religious cult. I forgot.

“He was still a kid, you know, and he was still a juvenile. He wasn’t an adult,” Jim Bob explained. He also sought to deflect blame from himself. Jim Bob told Megyn Kelly that “kids will make their own choices.”

Right, of course. That's the usual conservative approach to kids who commit crimes. Only a lad, you really can't blame him. . . Oh no, wait. The conservative answer to juvenile offenders is "lock 'em up and throw away the key, unless you think this might warrant the death penalty, 'cuz that could work too."

It's almost like there are two sets of standards for folks like this.
Drug offenders should do hard time, except for Rush Limbaugh who probably had a good reason for needing oxy.
Unwed teen moms are destroying the country, except Bristol Palin who's a role model for girls everywhere!
Sex offenders should be punished to the full extent of the law. Unless they've asked God for forgiveness and it wasn't really, ya know, "rape" exactly. I mean, hey, it's not like he tried to marry a dude or something!

Of course, being a right-wing theocrat in America means never taking any responsibility for your own actions!

Here's the video, if you're interested. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Oh, P.S. I'm aware that "disconcern" is probably not a real word. But I like it, so it stays.
Hey, Shakespeare made up words all the time, ya gotta love it!

Josh Duggar molested his sisters and his parents covered it up.

Ok, I don't have a son or a daughter, so I can't really say what I would do in that situation. I assume it would be a very hard thing to turn your son over to the police. But whatever solution I came up with, it would definitely not end with my molester son under the same roof with my daughters. Maybe military school? I don't know.
But I do think that it's very telling that Jim Bob and Michelle felt it more important to protect their son, the molester than to protect their daughters who were being molested.That pretty much sums up what value they place on people who are female.

It's also very telling that right-wingers feel the need to defend Josh Duggar, the molester, and his parents who covered it up. Even in this horrific a situation, they just can't say "okay, this time one of our guys is the bad guy." They can't ever admit that they might possibly be wrong about anything.

Take, for instance, this headline:

The Duggars Aren’t Hypocrites. Progressives Are.

Right, they can't possibly be in the wrong, because we've already declared them to be the good guys. The fault must somehow lie in "progressives," the designated villains.

By now you’ve probably heard that Josh Duggar — oldest son in the “19 Kids and Counting” family — did some very bad things a long time ago. Apparently, when he was 14, Josh fondled several young girls, including a number of his younger sisters.

So already we're downplaying this. "Apparently," "a long time ago," "Some very bad things." Makes it sound like maybe it's not all that serious. A more accurate description might be something along the lines of "13 years ago, Josh Duggar committed a series of sexual assaults against young girls, including his own sisters.' And also, the sexual assaults committed 13 years ago are the only ones we know about, but one has to assume that there are more which have occurred more recently, as being a child molester is not something one grows out of.

After admitting to these acts, his parents presented the situation to their church’s leadership, and Josh was sent to a family friend in Little Rock where he spent several months doing physical labor. 

In other word, his parents covered up his crimes and protected him from any punishment. He got sent to do construction work, not break rocks in the hot sun.

 The behavior stopped there, and Josh has been upfront about it to anyone who actually needs to know this information.

Really? He's been "upfront" about his his history of sex crimes? And yet managed to keep the information from the public for 13 years? Really? Also, we're just supposed to take his word for it that "the 'behavior' stopped there?"

Don't worry, he swears he's given up burglary! 

Also, the "behavior" is sexual assault. That's a bit more than misbehaving.

According to his wife, he confessed his past sins to her well before they were married.

Dear, before we marry, I have a confession to make.
Oh, darling, nothing you could say would make me love you any less!
Okay, um, I committed a series of sexual assaults on young girls including my own sisters.
Oh, thank God, I was afraid you were going to say you're gay! Of course I'll still marry you, you silly incestuous child molester!

The family did not, however, announce these details to the world, mostly because there was no conceivable reason to. 

No conceivable reason to? No conceivable. . . How about to let people with young daughters know to keep them the hell away from their degenerate son? That might be a conceivable reason. Or maybe, when you're on tv putting yopurself up as paragons of godly living, to maybe say,"hey, you know we might not be the best example to follow, seeing as how we raised an incestuous sex offender.?"

there was no conceivable reason to. That is, until someone leaked it to a tabloid, and the whole “scandal” exploded all over the media yesterday.

Oh my Gawd! You're actually going to put "scandal" in quotes? Like a series of sexual assaults isn't really a scandal? Molesting your own sisters, that's a tempest in a teapot if ever I've heard one.
Are you fucking serious?

The backlash has been severe.
Not because Josh’s actions were terrible — though they were, of course — but because the Duggars are a prominent Christian family who regularly speak out on contentious social issues like gay marriage. They are roundly despised for their beliefs, their outspoken nature, and for the parents’ decision to have 19 kids. Progressive trolls have been anxiously waiting for a chance to burn them down and dance on their ashes, and now they’ve finally been given the opportunity.

Oh, I get it now! Josh, the molester, and his parents, the molestation enablers, are the real victims here. Of course, it's all so clear now! People aren't angry about this guy getting away with committing a series of sexual assaults, they're just looking for an excuse to criticize this weirdo cult good Christian family!

Josh Duggar has already lost his job, been publicly shamed, and had his name permanently sullied by these revelations, but critics are not satisfied.

Oh my God, this guy has suffered enough! His name has been sullied. Sullied! What more do you want? Do you want him to do jail time just for committing horrible crimes? You know he lost his job, right? Isn't that punishment enough?

Speaking of hypocrites, I’m going to be very frank with you: I simply don’t believe most progressives actually care that Josh Duggar touched his sisters when he was 14. I don’t believe they are upset about it, or that it offends them, or that they are morally troubled by it. I don’t believe them. I just don’t.

Jeezus Christ! If you have to go through these kind of mental gymnastics. If you have to work from the assumption that those on the other end of the political argument are absolute soulless monsters, I just think that is more a reflection on the weakness of your positions than anything else.

Then there's oily hypocritical con man Mike Huckabee:




Good people make mistakes.
Good people make mistakes.
Seriously.

Molesting young girls is the action of a "good person" who made a "mistake."

Aren't Republicans supposed to be the party of personal responsibility. And the "tough on crime" party?
And "confessing his sins" and seeking help (in the form of a summer job with a family friend) is somehow reason enough to let off this sex offender scot-free?

And one last thing. I can't be the only one who shuddered when the first saw the Duggar cult family.



How can you look at that father and those kids and not assume that they live in a house of unspeakable horrors? My first thought was "terrible things are going on in that house." I didn't expect brother-on-sister sexual abuse, I figured on parent-led psychological and/or physical abuse, but it seemed obvious at first glance that something terrible was going on in that family.

Look at that dad! If you saw him walking down the street toward you, you'd pull your children close and cross to the other side. Through traffic.



Imagine how brainwashed these kids are. Especially the girls. Imagine growing up in a family where your only purpose in life, according to authority figures like your parents, your minister, etc, is to remain impossibly "pure" until it is time to become a baby factory. Imagine what they would have to put you through to keep you believing that! Actually, you don't  have to imagine. You can go to No Longer Quivering and read some of the horror stories of women who have escaped the "Quiverfull" movement.