Shortly after Gawker published their exclusive on Josh Duggar’s two Ashley Madison accounts, Gawker also did an interesting follow-up in which they wondered aloud if Josh had also been using a secret OKCupid account. While the profile photo was not a photo of Josh, everything else seemed to fit, including the “Joesmithsonnwa” handle, which Josh also used for his Ashley Madison account. Funny story: about twelve hours after Gawker published that OKCupid story, that profile was suddenly deleted. Interesting, eh?
Hilariously (or not so much, depending on your level of schadenfreude), it’s looking more and more like Josh also had a secret Facebook account too – the email account Josh used for his Ashley Madison account is also being used for a Facebook profile for “Joe Smithson” who lives in Arkansas. Again, the profile photo is not of Josh (the photo is of a Goldman Sachs executive’s son). But it’s probably Josh. And guess who he’s friended? Oh, just 32 people, mostly young women of the stripper and “lingerie model” variety.
So, yes, this whole thing has gotten messy to the point where there is no coming back. Even the Duggars know there’s no coming back. In the initial reporting of just the Ashley Madison accounts, a source told People Magazine: “It was pretty improbable that there were going to be any specials on any of the Duggars anyway. But now, with this, there’s virtually no chance. It’s basically just over now.” Then after Josh’s admissions, more sources spoke to People about how Jim-Bob and Michelle are handling the news that their first-born child is a lying, cheating, child-molesting adulterer.
Josh Duggar had already been living in relative seclusion with his family before his latest scandal imploded his world even further. Privately, a Duggar family insider tells PEOPLE: “We’re all hunkered down over here. It’s just a mess, it’s a whole mess. We don’t even know what the truth is anymore. It’s insane.”
A second source with ties to the family says the cheating scandal is a devastating blow to the Duggars’ firstborn, who resigned from his post at a right-wing Christian lobbying group in May.
“I would assume he feels like his life is ruined,” says the source. “It will be such a steep and practically impossible climb to come back from this.”
In this week’s PEOPLE cover story, a source who worked closely with the family says that in the wake of the molestation scandal, Jim Bob and Michelle recognized that anytime they were seen publicly with Josh, “a story gets made out of it that rehashes the whole mess. … Maintaining some distance is as much for his own good as it is for theirs.”
Now, with Josh’s confession to his “own personal failings,” the source with ties to the family says, “It’s like he’s a completely different person from who they thought he was. They’re still trying to reconcile all that they know is good about Josh, whom they will always love and adore, with what they’ve learned now.”
I’ve heard stories about Michelle Duggar being in a bubble of right-wing, cult-like hyper-delusion and how she just lets Jim-Bob’s behavior dictate her own. But… my impression of Michelle during their horrible Fox News interview was that she’s wily. She’s deadly when she’s been coached. My guess is that somewhere deep inside, Jim-Bob and Michelle both realize that something is really wrong with Josh, but I don’t know if they’ll realize that the crazy cult-mentality and sheltered existence they’ve given their family hasn’t helped ANY of the children.
In a new People Magazine story (new this morning), People Mag’s Duggar-tastic sources say that Jim-Bob and Michelle are “absolutely stunned” and “this wasn’t something they ever imagined was possible” because, and I sh-t you not, “They so strictly limit their exposure to these sorts of outside influences – from websites to even the sort of television they watch, if they turn on the TV at all – that they were absolutely baffled by how this could have been possible.” It’s like they don’t even realize that their hyper-repressed household is WHY Josh is so screwed up. But no worries, y’all, because sources maintain that the Duggars are “feeling more devout than ever” and “their faith is in no way rocked by this.” Your faith SHOULD be rocked by this. This horrible hypocrisy taken with your son’s repeated and escalated incidents of molestation SHOULD cause you to take a moment, rethink your child-rearing and adjust.
Photos courtesy of Duggars’ social media.
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