Me and the Duggars

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's funny, you know. Since I started this blog on March 29, 2005, I've written posts on many, many different topics. Most of my posts have been political in one way or another, though I've also written extensively on popular culture and philosophy. In all, I and my contributors, co-bloggers and guest bloggers, have written almost 1800 posts.

Quite a few of those posts, I'm happy to say, have been linked to at prominent blogs and/or news sites and have generated a lot of traffic for The Reaction alongside our regular readers. And yet, one post that seems to have received a disproportionate amount of attention, judging by the comments that it still gets even though it's now deep in the archives, is the one I wrote on October 14, 2005 on the Duggars -- Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 16 children. You can find that post here.

At the time, I was not terribly enthusiastic about what the Duggars were up to in terms of procreation: "This has nothing to do with God or a god or the gods. Rather, it has everything to do with Jim and Michelle fornicating without birth control while maintaining a child-like belief in divine omnipotence. Faith is no excuse for ignorance and irresponsibility. Someone needs to tell them to stop. Now."

I suppose I stand by what I wrote back then, although, if you read through the comments, you'll notice that quite a few readers (and presumably many in the wider public) disagree vehemently with me. That's fine. The Duggars are free to do what they want. It just seems to me that procreating so prolifically isn't necessarily such a good thing. But then I hardly share their child-like, and selective, beliefs.

I won't add more here, but I was wondering if there are any new Duggars. I've done a quick search today but didn't come up with anything other than reports of #16 from last October and the family website, which seems not to have been updated recently.

What are the Duggars of Springdale, Arkansas up to? Are they still being fruitful and multiplying like crazy?