This morning, the Today show continued its bizarre love affair with the traveling Evangelical baby factory known as the Duggar clan -- which allows me to "resurrect" (pardon the pun) what I wrote the last time these people appeared on the show, four months ago. For the record, I kept waiting for the Duggar mom to announce this morning that she was pregnant again while she was still carrying her latest child. In case you were lucky enough to miss it, the Duggar family took time out from its hectic overpopulation schedule to grace the
Today show this morning, where they were treated to heaps of warm encomia on-camera (and were mercilessly joked about off-camera). For those who don't have a subscription to
Procreation Weekly, the Duggars -- Jim Bob and Michelle -- are the lucky parents of 17 children. Michelle, who essentially has an assembly line that ends at her cervix, cranks out about a kid a year, and has since 1988.
It goes completely without saying that the Duggars are full-on fundamentalist Christians who live in Arkansas, don't believe in contraception, home-school their entire brood, and somehow find a way to joyfully drop the name of the Lord every fifteen seconds or so like there's a Skinner Box treat in it for them.
Think of the Flanders -- times nine.
Or maybe that polygamist cult in Texas, as dressed by the Gap.
All morning,
Today hyped the appearance by America's favorite freakshow, teasing viewers with hints of a "big announcement" that mom Michelle was going to make live on the air.
If you couldn't see this one coming, you were probably home-schooled:
That's right, they're having another baby -- number 18!At least the show's producers had the cynical forethought not to tease that it was a "big
surprise announcement."
I really don't have a joke here; this whole thing kind of makes its own gravy. I just needed somebody to laugh at and poke with a stick this morning and you know something, the Duggars are right -- the Lord
does provide.
(Incidentally, yes, that's them in the picture)
