The Duggar Family Makes No Sense At All

Some three years ago I had a blog that I called "Makes No Sense At All", named after the Hüsker Dü song. The point of it was to give me an occasional soap-box from which to give into Andy Rooney tendencies and just grumble and complain about whatever took my fancy. I didn't carry on with it too long, and it was read by, like, a maximum of five people who were not GoogleBots. So since it's just sat there moribund, collecting digital dust down the years. I decided I might as well close down the old blog and syndicate its contents here, in weekly installations. I've eliminated a few blog entries that seem too anachronistic by now, but the blogs that I have included I've not edited at all. So enjoy watching me at my grumpiest... Makes No Sense at All.

Originally published 29 May 2008.

Apparently, former Arkansas Representative Jim Bob Duggar and his wife Michelle Duggar have recently announced that they are pregnant with their eighteenth child. He or she is due on New Year's Day, 2009.

In case it needs mentioning, these two people are completely out of their minds.

It's not just the eighteen kids either. I mean, it's not just fact of their having eighteen kids. It's the following particular details that prove that these people are completely off their tree:

• All eighteen of the kids have names that start with "J". These include, but clearly are not limited to, Jedidiah, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jessa and - most heinous of all - Jinger (sic).

• Their web site, www.duggarfamily.com, is chock-full of cultish Jesus-babble (the kind that capitalize the words "LORD" and "GOD" like those old "footprints" posters).

• Their web site shows pictures of the whole brood, in which every male child, regardless of age, has the exact same face, haircut and inane Jesus-smile.

Their web site is also filled with smug references to their financial independence - without reference to how much of that 'financial independence' comes from TV shows and appearances calculated to capitalize on public interest in their freakishly rodent-like reproductive habits. In a world where population growth is a very real concern, their gruesome existence not only makes no sense at all, it gets me curious how it can be that the Duggar family and I can be, roughly speaking, of the same species.

Incidentally, I mentioned that Jim Bob himself was a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives.

Any guess which party he was a member of?