Oh, the joyous news! The Duggars – the family the world can’t seem to get enough of is obliging us by giving us yet another little Duggar. Local news anchors will “Ooh and Aah” until the cows come home.

Someone on Facebook this past week described the Duggars as “child-hoarders.”

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It seems almost churlish to say anything mean-spirited about the Duggars. After all, they raise such pretty children! They look so cute and winsome on TV. Who wouldn’t welcome a family like that into their neighborhood?

But while the cooing news crews giggle amongst themselves about the media sensation that is the Duggar family (are there any action figures out yet? Get your mind out of the gutter) why is it that no one really asks them about their lifestyle, or why it is that Ms. Duggar feels impelled to submit to a man who can’t wait to hit the “send” key on all of his electronic equipment in the inevitable event of yet another pregnancy?

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How are the children raised? What do they read? How are the girls raised to see their role in the universe? What can’t they aspire to?

Oh, but they look so cute! And look! They sold some lemonade to help charity!

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Yet the brutal truth of the matter is that if the Duggerines lived in a trailer park, or in a tar-paper shack on the outskirts of town, folks would be looking askance at them, and asking some serious questions.

DHS would be doing a drive-by at least once a year.

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Ah, but it’s the Duggars, Drake! Why be such a sourpuss?

Well, I have a tiny bit of experience in television, and I know something about a thing called editing, which means that viewers only see what you want them to see, and everything else is left out. What do we know about the Duggars, apart from the television image?

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We see the wonderful world of the Duggars, but anything that might creep out us out never makes it on screen. Well, in a medium that seems suddenly to be offering up series about Mall cops, modern-day moonshiners and pawn shop owners – who the hell is bored enough to watch this crap? – I suppose that we don’t want to get too heavy here.

And the Duggars don’t live in a trailer park, after all, do they? Nor do they live in a shack in the middle of nowhere.

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No, nicotine-starved reader, they are on are television. You think maybe they do that show for free?

Yeah, everyone who watches the show enables the Duggars. Everyone who advertises on the show enables the Duggars and whatever it is that we don’t see when the camera lights turn off.

******

Mike Masterson’s “gag reflex” and anti-colonialism

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Oh, Mike, you’re so much better than this.

We expected as much from Rick Perry, who distorted the president’s words about how the government has been lazy in getting business for America to mean that Americans as a whole are lazy.

But you aren’t a self-serving politician running for office; you are a journalist, who works with words every day. You knew the truth even before you began to write Saturday’s column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Now, folks who never saw the interview will parrot both you and Perry and write scads of letters to the newspaper, talking about our “Marxist” president once more.

Anyway, the ever-sensitive Mike had to choke back a gag reflex when he heard Obama say this, though it is difficult to say why. By now, Mike has such a low opinion of the president that he could say he sacrifices Baptist babies on Christmas day, and Mike would probably just nod and reach for another Dorito.

As he occasionally does, Mike just sort of stops writing at this point, and turns his column over to John Porter of Harrison, who writes about the “strange and mysterious air” about Obama. Porter almost seems to fall into the “Obama as Manchurian Candidate” school of thought, as he writes – as so many conservatives before him – at the lack of knowledge of Obama’s life before he became president.

Because, like, you know, dude, there was nobody who even knew this guy, and even if there were, how do we know they really exist?

As always, Obama is never reverent enough when he talks about America, or loving enough. For Porter, Obama resembles one of the POWs in Vietnam being forced to read “confessions” aloud for the camera.

I kind of liked that one, actually. It was a good image. But one good use of imagery doesn’t make for a persuasive piece of writing.

For Comrade Porter, the fact that George Bush was never comfortable in front of a camera never made a dent in his mind. Hell, just think back to Richard Nixon if you want to think of a mannequin. But it’s okay, we definitely know they loved America. They said they did.

And then we go on to Dinesh D’Souza, whose writing Porter then goes on to quote.

Yeah, Obama’s life wasn’t like ours, he is a much more dangerous man than you could ever imagine. You might think it was the American civil rights movement that influenced him, but no, it was an inherited rage (I hate that kind of thing, don’t you?) which came down from his – gasp! – African father, a man seething with anti-colonist-rage. Furthermore, Obama is also angry at the whole western world, and especially the wealthy and powerful in his great nation of ours.

Ours, but not really his.

He’s just not one of us, Homer.

While Americans threw off the yoke of colonialism, and it was a good thing, it wasn’t such a good thing for them folks in Africa. After all, they needed the gentle (if sometimes brutal) hand of civilization.

Okay, a lot more than sometimes.

Porter ends his thinking with the warning that next year Americans can rededicate themselves to the principles that made this country so great, or once more put ourselves at the mercy of a man whose heart and soul may not be American, or at least not the America that you and I grew up with.

Before turning his column over to Porter’s writing, Mike sort of sits back with the words:

“Make of their pertinence what you will.”

No.

If you gave your column over to him, I suspect it probably means you agree with most, if not everything he wrote. Otherwise, why not just give him a guest column?

Oh, and that anti-colonialist rap? That’s just another way of saying Obama doesn’t like white people.

*****

Quote of the Day

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. – Susan Ertz

rsdrake@cox.net

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