19 Kids, One Paycheck, and Jim Bob Duggar Had It All

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Jill Duggar is a married adult woman with her own children when she finally had to sit down and explain to a therapist what her childhood actually looked like. Not the version on television, the actual version. She described needing her father's permission to come home, being forbidden from entering the family compound without his great approval. Remember the umbrellas we've talked about? Jim Bob's umbrella. Be funny when he dies if they bury him with a giant umbrella. Shoved up his ass.
Her husband Derick Dillard has publicly alleged that Jim Bob negotiated their television contracts, controlled the payments, and collected money earned by his adult married children without their knowledge or meaningful consent. You know, the Christian thing to do. These are the allegations anyway. Dillard has made these claims repeatedly and publicly. They have not been adjudicated in court, but nobody has sued him for making them either.
These are the claims that are being made by her. We're not making these claims. These are the claims she's making. We're just talking about them. Jill spent years in therapy after leaving. She wrote a memoir about it. She called the environment. She grew up in cult-like. She said those exact words. Millions of people watched this family on television for a decade and called it wholesome, wholesome family entertainment. It started with a newspaper photo. Jim Bob Duggar ran for US. Senate in Arkansas in 2002 Lost horribly. Failed. Failed like, oh my God. Pulled just over 20,000 votes against an incumbent, but a picture of the family at the polling place. Round of the New York Times. From there, Ladies Home Journal, Parents Magazine, a Discovery Health special in 2004 called Fourteen Children and Pregnant Again. They didn't figure out rhyming yet. The family had been promised their faith would be central to how they were portrayed, and they agreed to cameras. The franchise grew fast. Seventeen Kids and Counting became Nineteen Kids and Counting. And by 2014, Jill Duggar's Wedding Special drew 4.4 million viewers. TLC's highest rated program. The Duggars were not just a television show. They were a brand, a proof of concept, living evidence that IBLP was a way of life that produced happy, faithful, functional families. But there is a totally different story beneath the surface, beneath the cameras, beneath reality, television, which if you've not caught on by now, is pretty much anything but reality. Your thoughts as we go through this in the comment section on Substack and YouTube. We'd love for you to weigh in. Every element of that image was managed, approved and financially controlled, allegedly by Jim Bob. Like it was being broadcast, and understand what you were saying. Michelle Duggar's soft, littling voice, the one that became a kind of cultural punchline, the perpetual sweetness of it, the almost childlike register. Isn't a quirk. Former IBLP members have described it specifically. It's a trained presentation. The yielding affect of a woman who has fully internalized the doctrine of submission. It's also a tone which you will understand. And I'm no way saying that this is what happened. I just have no idea, but I'm not accusing anyone of it. But it's also a typical affect that you see of someone who has suffered childhood s-abuse. A lot of them talk in baby girl tone. Without even knowing it well into adulthood. It's not a any sort of discount or trying to be negative or hurtful to anybody who suffered that. That's a horrible thing to go through. But statistically and psychologically speaking, you will find this to be a pattern and a trend and something that our minds do as a protection method. Now, that's not to say again. I'm not saying that that happened to her whatsoever. But it is an interesting, an interesting affect to have because one can get to that place of submission, if you will, in more ways than one. Horrible s abuse in childhood or, you know, a religion that just takes it out of you in other ways.
It's interesting. It's interesting that that ends up being the affect when you remove control and autonomy and all of that from a human being, specifically, I guess, you know, a female that they, you get this sort of, it's interesting. I have no idea what her past is or what she may have gone through in life, if anything at all, or if that affect is just 100% a show that she's putting on because that's how IBLP taught it, or if that's just kind of what the human brain does. Once you have essentially brainwashed somebody into the submission level, that IBLP allegedly does. I don't know. That's my opinion. Michelle wasn't performing for television. She was performing it because that's what the system produced. And television just put a camera on it and called it timing. The courtship rules worked the same way. Adult children, grown men and women, needed Jim Bob's approval before pursuing a relationship. No unchaperoned contact. Side hugs, side hugs until you're engaged. Every step mediated by the father whose authority in IBLP doctrine is an extension of God's own. This is how they think. This was filmed and broadcast and received by millions of viewers as sweet, old fashioned, refreshingly innocent. It's funny. I remember people watching this show and I would just shake my head like, you fools. You fools. You think this is some sort of like old fashioned, old Jim Bob dandy, wonderful way of living. I mean, come on. Come on.