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Saturday, December 06, 2008
Kathleen Parker :: Townhall.com Columnist
Them Oogedy-Boogedy Blues
by Kathleen Parker
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WASHINGTON -- When it comes to irresistible words, "oogedy-boogedy" has few peers.

In the several days since I first used the term in a column describing the Republican Party's "religious" problem, oogedy-boogedy seems to have entered the bloxicon. (New word invented right here, meaning: the blogosphere's lexicon.) Google produces more than 26,000 references.

Despite its sudden popularity, oogedy-boogedy is nonetheless causing some consternation and confusion. What does it mean and whence does it come? In the Dec. 15 issue of National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru writes that he doesn't know what oogedy-boogedy means, "but I gather it's bad."

Not so bad, really, but not so good either. Like most things religious and political, it's a matter of taste and timing. (See Ecclesiastes 3:1).

First, to the origins. "Oogedy-boogedy" was bequeathed to me several years ago by my dear, departed friend, political cartoonist Doug Marlette. We were doubtless talking about our shared Southern heritage, about which one does not speak long without mentioning religion.

And, you betcha, oogedy-boogedy.

Marlette, whose childhood was spent among Pentecostals, Baptists and other passionate believers, had religion in his bones and forgot more scripture than most preachers can recall on a given Sunday. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for his lampooning of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (peace be upon them) and their "PTL Club."

If Jim and Tammy Faye put you in mind of oogedy-boogedy, you're getting warm.

Otherwise, the term may best be illuminated by two connoisseurs of the linguistic arts: Fats Waller and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

The latter, unable to define pornography, famously said, "I know it when I see it." Waller, responding to a request to explain "swing," said, "If you got to ask, you ain't got it."

The list of commentators who ain't got oogedy-boogedy is long, though Ponnuru is the most recent to out himself. While dismissing assertions -- mine and others' -- that the Republican Party has a religion problem, Ponnuru acknowledges that social conservatives "could present themselves more attractively," and "pick their spokesmen more wisely."

That's a start, but let's take it another step. How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one's values, but let reason inform one's public arguments.

That was and remains my point. It isn't so much God causing the GOP problems; it's his fan club. Continued...
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About The Author
Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.
 
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(204 comments so Far)
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Reply # 1
Date: Dec 23, 2008 - 12:13 PM EST
Kathleen's preoccupied with bitterness.
Kathleen, we get it. You’re preoccupied within your own brand of bitterness.

However, perhaps you should try considering that it's not the GOP that has a "religious problem". Our nation, founded directly on the principles of Christianity, indeed does have a "religious problem".

You should consider that so because most people alive today, & most people that have ever lived, have confessed to having had some degree of “religious“ “Faith”. And to having had at least one deeply “religious” experience.

With that all so Kathleen, we the professed ~believers~ of God’s existence, must have either failed to respond properly (apparently according to you, & others of your ilk) to the modern godless version of “Education”. Which should be more properly & accurately titled as, Indoctro-cation.

You see Kathleen, we ~believers~ understand that we live in a misshapen culture today. Where the so called “Educated class”, those more like yourself, are actually increasingly becoming the “Indoctro-cated” class.

(Y)our educational systems have managed to cognitively replace (y)our own sense of God’s presence, with pseudo science. Rather than seeing & admitting to God’s hand, as gently guiding the universe.

You & those like you are attempting to replace all of the mysteries of God, with other equally mysterious & unexplained, fully secular forces.

To do so, you’ve created, accepted, & now demand that all others also accept, your mysterious forces, known as “Dark Matter”, “Dark Energy”, and "Random Selection", as the forces guiding the universe.

You do so despite your complete inability to prove, quantify, or even directly observe the presence of any of the forces you attempt to codify. And, despite your own true knowledge, of God.
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Reply # 2
Date: Dec 9, 2008 - 3:59 AM EST
KATHLEEN: MAKE A LIFE, NOT A LIVING..#2


"And as he worked, he ignored death and transcended life, and so age looked over his shoulder, breathless with delight, and neglected to touch the artist in its absorption with the art. The decades and the centuries, in the mood of Eternity, became a part of the ring. Men who did not seek perfection, but merely pay or praise, completed their little works, and such works and workers faded. Only equal artists and arts - the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, the cathedrals of Chartres and Rouen, the marbles of Michelangelo, the canvases of Rembrandt, the plays of Shakespeare ... and the humble housewife baking bread with love and joy, or the farmer eighty years old planting new orchards over his hills - remained as his co-eternalists. The error of man's follies dissolved like shadows around him, for only beauty is truth, and only truth is beauty. And still the artist of the ring worked on, ageless, timeless, beyond pain or pleasure, failure or success, in the bliss of creation.

And at last he said, "All that I can do is done; the ring is at last a ring!" It was only then that he wondered if there were any finger to wear that to which he has given his love and labor. And he heard a Voice beyond all voices, and he saw a Finger beyond all fingers; and the Voice said, "Set it upon My finger, and I will wear it forever and forever."

That ring is now a new galaxy of suns and planets, shining in beauty upon the Hand of God."

Make a Life - Not a "Living
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