 family of TLC's "19 Kids & Counting" and how they are no more worthy of attention than the Kardashians. Their children are denied "freedom of choice."
"My thoughts on the Duggars are few and far between because I think the show treats its viewers like they're learning-disabled," he wrote. Then he doubled down. "The viewers, not the Duggars. Although... "
Leftists, especially openly gay writers like Stuever, itch for the children to rebel against that old-time religion. "I guess we just sit and wait and hope that there's a contrarian in the bunch who gets the itch to write a tell-all at some point down the road. I'd be surprised if anyone seriously watches the Duggar show out of a place of envy."
It is the right of a TV critic to knock the Duggar show as too sweet and happy and prim for his snarky tastes. But how do those critics react when you knock a show they like? "If you don't like it, turn the channel!" Let's face it, the Duggar family isn't broken by divorce or addiction or other social maladies. That is why the critics are turned off.
On the other hand, the celebrity magazines have found these popular Christian reality shows to be worthy of cover stories. The latest Us Weekly forwards "Duck Dynasty" teenager Sadie Robertson's decision to forego premarital sex. A recent edition of People magazine reported on newly married Jill Duggar and the family's "Extreme Courtship Rules." Those principles are a direct challenge to today's hookup culture, and that's what makes magazine readers so curious about them.
It naturally follows that loutish "sex columnist" Dan Savage would get in his insults at these "professional virgins." The conservative blog site Twitchy took exception to his wisecracking on Twitter that the Duggar daughters should observe his mating rules, including his notion of "F-- First." Savage thinks people should be sexually compatible before marriage, so chastity is a terrible idea. In fact, he despises virginity and its advocates. His rules also include cheating, which is "inevitable" in his mind.
After Twitchy spurred the conservative Twitterati to attack him, Savage then responded with a 2,500-word attack on the Duggar worldview. Like Stuever, it begins with the notion that Christians are an organized "hate group." Their oldest son Josh now works for the Family Research Council, which validates their charge, they would tell you.
Savage argues that if the Duggars were Muslims and Josh worked for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, conservatives would never embrace them. "But the right wing doesn't have a problem with the Duggars: They're the right color, they worship the right God, and they want to impose the right brand of theocracy."
Savage, like Stuever, wishes these robot-children would grow up to reject their freakish parents: "I have hopes for all the unmarried little Duggars still being pimped on television and dragged to campaign rallies: I hope they all get out from under the thumbs of their crazy, controlling, virginity-obsessed parents."
Leftists better hope their "best wishes" for rebellion are never turned on them. Would it seem kind for conservatives to wish that Dan Savage's adopted son should write a "tell-all book" about growing up having to hear all about his "father's" extreme sex rules and obsessions? It would seem unkind, intolerant and smug -S all adjectives that apply to the Duggar bashers.
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Immigration: the real cost to Britain
It's official: immigration is great. According to a new report from University College London, those arriving on these shores between 2001 and 2011 put roughly œ25 billion more into the economy than they took out, creating millions of new jobs in the process. So what's all the fuss about?
Well, before Nigel Farage runs down to Heathrow with a great big "Welcome!" sign, let's stir in a pinch of salt. For starters, the benefits we're talking about aren't as significant as they sound. During that decade, the immigrant population grew by more than 2.5 million, meaning (to a rough approximation) that each new arrival is chipping in less than œ20 a week.
In fact, if you widen the timescale, and focus on immigrants as a whole rather than those who have arrived in the past decade or so, you can tell a rather different story. Between 1995 and 2011, those originally from Europe - whether they arrived under Heath, Thatcher, Blair or Cameron - added just œ4 billion to Britain's economy. Meanwhile, those who came from further abroad - the West Indies, India, Australia etc - took out œ118 billion. It's hard to call that a good deal.
The next obvious criticism is that "net fiscal benefit" is not the same thing as things getting better. Just as concreting over the green belt increases GDP, but sends voters into a rage, so immigration has costs that don't turn up on the spreadsheets - greater competition for housing, pressure on public services, lower wages for those at the bottom, changes to the character of communities. It would be a foolish politician who waved this report at the people of Rochdale or Boston, and told them not to worry.
Even the fact that the newest arrivals are putting in more than they take out shouldn't be much of a surprise. For all the furore over benefit tourism, it's long been clear that most migrants want to add to Britain's wealth, not to leach off it.
The problem is that increasing the size of Britain's economy is not the same thing as making its existing inhabitants richer. Back in 2008, Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, was part of a House of Lords committee that produced a wide-ranging study of immigration's effects. "If you take everything into account," he tells me, "there's very little evidence that it increases prosperity, in terms of GDP per head of population. In terms of what most people are worried about - their standard of living - it doesn't make any difference at all."
Moreover, while today's immigrants may be young and keen, they will soon grow out of it. "Initially, you may get some economic boost," says Lord Lawson. "But as immigrants get older they require more help from social services and so on, and as they have children, those children require education, and in the longer run you don't get that benefit."
But in fact, the central message of this report isn't about immigration at all. It's about the people who are already here.
During that period between 1995 and 2011, the total net contribution to the public finances of European immigrants, new and old, was - as mentioned above - œ4 billion. But at the same time, the British-born population took out a staggering œ591 billion more than it put in.
That, ultimately, is why we've got a deficit: because the average Briton is getting more services from the state than he or she is willing to - or, more charitably, has been asked to - pay for. Non-European migrants are even more of a drain on the Exchequer, partly because they have larger families, but also because they've been here long enough to learn our bad habits.
What this suggests, in turn, is that we've got our perception of immigration upside-down. It's not a case of foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs. It's us creaming off the best and brightest from other countries, and bringing them here to do the jobs we can't or won't.
Consider the following statistics from the UCL report. Native Britons, it finds, are more likely to be on benefits (37 per cent of us receive some kind of handout or tax credit) or to be living in social housing than new arrivals. The starkest differences are in education: as of 2011, more than half of the British-born population had left school before the age of 17, putting them in the "low-education" category. Among Europeans living in this country, the figure was 21 per cent, and among non-Europeans, 23 per cent. Fewer than a quarter of native Britons have university degrees - among our foreign guests, it's 35 per cent and 41 per cent respectively. And this attainment gap is getting steadily wider, as ever more BAs and PhDs arrive on these shores.
This injection of brainpower is undoubtedly good for that nebulous beast, "the economy". But it also allows us to paper over the social cracks. Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms have done wonders to push people back into work. But the proportion of households where no one actually works is still almost one in six. Because there is such a ready supply of skilled labour from elsewhere, Britain's under-educated can all too easily be written off.
Alongside the state, employers must take their share of the blame. "If you want to be a high-wage economy," says David Green, of the Civitas think tank, "then you need a skilled and trained workforce. I think companies have taken the easy option of importing skills because they can get people right away. For example, you can't say that employers have reduced the number of apprenticeships because of the influx of skilled newcomers from overseas. But it's certainly a hell of a coincidence."
It's not just Britain that loses out. Between 1995 and 2011, claims the UCL study, "European immigrants endowed the UK labour market with human capital that would have cost œ14 billion if it were produced through