In prepping a children’s program where I’d be recording all the Duggars from TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, I read a lot about this family on the Internet.

Boy was that unhelpful.

I wanted to make sure I got their characters right while scripting the dialogue for an episode of Life at the Pond.  And even though well over a million people watch this show weekly, the Internet was fraught with misinformation. I’ll spare you the gory details, a quick Google of “Duggars” will provide a couple hundred thousand results and you can get a bowl of popcorn and make a day of it.

But there was one common theme, sometimes from quasi reputable sites, that permeated the Internet:  The Duggar children are captives in their own home.

Before traveling to Arkansas to record, I’d only spoken on the phone with Jim Bob Duggar, the father of all 19.  I watched the TLC program, and that was my only exposure to the children.  They seemed pretty well behaved, which explains why I wanted to use them in this episode in the first place.

Jim Bob was kind enough to invite my entire family into his home.  We ended up spending parts of three days there, and I can tell you first hand, this is no ordinary family.

You won’t find a television in their giant living room.  The Internet is greatly restricted. The girls’ room (9 of 10 sleep in one room – the only exception is temporary, newborn Josie) didn’t have Hanna Montana or boy band or vampire posters or anything like it.

Lady Gaga did not make the cut. (more…)

Leave it to PETA to push the envelope.

“Doggies Multiply Faster Than Duggars: Be Responsible. Always Spay and Neuter.”  That was a billboard campaign that the controversial animal-rights organization wanted to launch in Springdale, Arkansas, near where America’s most fertile homeschooling family resides. But the company that rents the billboard space (wisely) backed out.

It’s hardly the first time, nor will it be the last, that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their many children have become a contentious national talking point. But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was downright respectful, compared to how unhinged liberal pundits have smeared them.

Back in 2005 when the Duggars had only 16 children, a San Francisco Chronicle writer named Mark Morford insulted the devout Christian family, sneeringly describing them as:

spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child as they suck the skin from each other’s Scientological faces and even worse than that huge 13-foot python which ate that six-foot alligator and then exploded.

Morford also managed to both give Michelle Duggar crude advice and blaspheme the Lord: (more…)