Derick Dillard has been on a tear recently, exposing Jim Bob Duggar for scooping up all of the Counting On money for himself.
Now, Derick is sharing further details, including how poorly he and Jill were treated and the extreme lengths that he went to to protect his family.
A fan recently asked Derick Dillard a question so very well-put that Derick offered a very revealing answer.
"So do you mean to say that none of the Duggar children ever got paid for being on the show?" the fan inquired.
The same follower added: "Or are you saying that you believed they weren’t paid enough for their efforts."
“You would have the right to be upset either way," the question correctly concluded.
There is a difference between not being paid enough and not being paid at all, and Derick is now clearing that up.
"I've previously mentioned volunteerism as it relates to our past with the show," Derick's reply begins.
"And volunteer means volunteer," he states.
In other words, volunteers are not underpaid, they are simply unpaid. He's saying that he and Jill got zilch.
"While we began as volunteers," Derick writes, "it eventually became apparent that it wasn’t even volunteerism."
He explains why he feels that he and Jill did not enjoy the same freedoms as real volunteers.
Derick reasons: "because typically volunteerism assumes that you can leave without serious risks."
He notes that these were real risks "such as legal/financial threats." It's unclear if these were from TLC or from Jim Bob himself.
"in addition to the extreme emotional pressure from within and without your family," Derick continues.
That could not more clearly be a swipe at Jim Bob and, perhaps, others.
He writes that these are pressures "which unfortunately end with painful burning of bridges."
Derick concludes by saying that they were forced to burn said bridges "just so that you can protect your family."
So, to summarize.
Derick is proclaiming to the world that he and Jill worked without any financial compensation, viewing themselves as volunteers.
Giving their extreme fundamentalist beliefs, they may have believed that this was akin to doing service for religious charitable reasons.
But in the end, he says, Derick and Jill were under such pressure to continue performing this free service that they had to break away, no matter what.
Of course, we need to keep a level perspective in this.
Jim Bob is a bad person and a worse father; that is pretty much indisputable unless someone has their head buried in the sand.
But that doesn't mean that Derick is a good or trustworthy person.
There's a reason that we don't see Derick on Counting On anymore, and contrary to his tale of noble sacrifice, he's not the victim of this story.
Derick's departure from Counting On just so happened to coincide with his vicious, transphobic attacks against a teenage girl, Jazz Jennings.
In addition to being a high school students, she was also a TLC star. The reports that he was fired for these attacks are very believable.
Is Derick claiming that he only posted these monstrous, bigoted things about her and other trans people because he wanted to get fired?
Even if that was the only way to "burn bridges," so to speak, it would still not excuse outright bigotry against a marginalized teen.
