Josh Duggar said heâs sorry, but is TLC? Menon
TLC should make a reality show about controversial TLC reality shows.
It would be like a cracked mirror reflecting a foggy mirror, an eternal cascade of blurry images and croaky sound bites from programs such as My Husband’s Not Gay, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Jon & Kate Plus Eight, Toddlers and Tiaras, Virgin Diaries, I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, Freaky Eaters, My Strange Addiction, Extreme Cheapskates, America’s Worst Tattoos and Hoarding: Buried Alive.
This is the strangest thing about TLC. You don’t even need to watch two minutes to know the cable network that once stood for The Learning Channel should be renamed TFS, as in The Freak Show. TLC has become a pox on humanity.
Who needs educational content when it’s cheaper to exploit misfits and oddballs? Who needs tedious explorations of global economics or climate change when you can watch a social pariah unveil his collection of Wet-Naps?
If you want to star in a TLC show — and they accept online applications — all you probably need to do is send in a video in which you’re gobbling thumbtacks or reading Shakespeare to lampposts or confessing a lifelong attraction to farm animals while sprawled on a bed of hay in your cow pyjamas.
My Girlfriend Is A Sheep could totally be a TLC show.
But the downside of setting up tripods in the cultural margins to showcase people who don’t hew to convention is that a network runs the risk of showcasing people who may be more than just unusual.
They may be prone to bad behaviour.
They may be compelled to engage in actions we tend to frown upon.
This is why a reality star is statistically more likely to say something racist than is your real neighbour Bill. And it’s why so many reality stars have been nailed for homophobia or fraud or sexual assault.
Which brings us to 19 Kids and Counting. What did Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar do to warrant stardom? The Christian evangelicals had kids. They had a lot of kids. They kept having kids even after the TLC show debuted in 2008, back when it was called 17 Kids and Counting. Then the kids, home-schooled and raised with strict rules about dating, started having kids of their own.
Extreme reproduction turned into a lucrative franchise.
And now that franchise is threatened by the alleged misdeeds of the eldest kid.
On May 21, In Touch magazine published a “bombshell” of a story: a claim that Josh Duggar, now 27 years old, confessed to molesting at least five girls when he was a teenager, including his own sisters. Duggar was never charged with a crime and the statute of limitations has expired. On Monday, an old clip from the show resurfaced, in which Duggar makes an incest joke, which seems to suggest we can at least debate the “deeply regret” and “extremely sorry” contained in his public apology last week.
So now TLC finds itself in a similar position to when the network cancelledHere Comes Honey Boo Boo last fall because matriarch Mama June was allegedly dating a sex offender. Only the situation this time is even worse because if you analyze a timeline of events, it’s hard to believe TLC did not know something was amiss.
The sexual assault allegations have existed for years. They have appeared on blogs dedicated to the show. The molestation allegations are also why Oprah Winfrey reportedly scrapped a special on the Duggars in 2006 and contacted authorities.
So what did TLC do in the immediate aftermath of the scandal? It aired a marathon of 19 Kids and Counting. Then on Friday, after an outcry, it hastily pulled the show . . . for now. But the long-term fate of the show remains unclear, which shows you just how far down the rabbit hole TLC has tumbled.
Josh Duggar is accused of abusing young girls. He then went on to become a strident cheerleader for traditional family values. He embodies everything that is wrong with this world.
This is not something TLC should try to rationalize. Instead, it should take a long hard look into one of those mirrors and figure out why the content it champions is riddled with so much scandal.
