Kathleen Parker and the Oogedy Boogedy Blues (I think she'll be the next Arriana Huffington)

Pajamas Media ^ | Nov 21,2008 | Rick Moran

[SeekAndFind]

In this, the interregnum between the end of one administration and the beginning of another, there’s not much for Republicans to do except look for ways to entertain themselves while Democrats are occupied with the serious business of creating a government.

The problem — and the GOP is just waking up to this — is that there is absolutely nothing for them to do but wait. No one cares what they think of President-elect Obama’s choice for attorney general or any other cabinet post. The Clinton drama has always been a Democratic farce and only involved the Republicans as onlookers, cheering on the inevitable car crash at the top of turn #3.

The agenda in Congress is being set with no input from the losers. The titanic struggle for control of the House Energy and Commerce Committee saw the really, really ancien régimeof Representative John Dingell, who began serving in Congress when Eisenhower was playing golf on the White House lawn, replaced by the Watergate Baby Henry Waxman. Republicans had absolutely no say in this changeover — a product of being soundly and roundly beaten at the polls. “To the winner belongs the spoils” the saying goes. To the loser belongs spoiled milk, rotten tomatoes, and rancid meat.

Without anything constructive to do, Republicans have apparently decided that being destructive might not be the wisest course of action but is a far sight better than sitting around and twiddling their thumbs. And that brings us to Kathleen Parker, conservative columnist with the Washington Post Writer’s Group and, lately, the bane of the GOP base.

Parker, who became the model for thousands of conservative voodoo dolls when she wrote a few weeks ago that Sarah Palin should resign from the GOP ticket, enjoyed the response she got to that suggestion so much that she decided to take her fight with the base several levels of magnitude higher by offering her opinion that conservative evangelicals are scary beasts who so frightened the electorate that they ran screaming into the polling booth and punched the card for the Democrats.

No doubt believing herself quite clever and amusing, Parker offered [1] this “analysis” of why the GOP got shellacked at the polls:

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth-as long as we’re setting ourselves free-is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

So God lost the election for the Republicans? I mean, I know the old fellow has a soft spot in his heart for children, dogs, and totally clueless liberals, but really now. Parker is saying that belief in G-O-D is scary — “Oogedy Boogedy” — and that such belief is an affliction, or disease.

At least that’s better than her reference to “armband religion.” When you stop and think just who might be famous for wearing armbands, you might wonder how she could confuse devout Christians with Nazi stormtroopers.

Parker goes on to say all sorts of nasty, pejorative, exaggerated, and hurtful things about the GOP Christian right including how the party is “increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners.” As a writer I can appreciate the imagery but I can’t say much for Parker’s powers of observation. Has she seen the suits worn by some of those preachers? They aren’t made of sackcloth I can tell you that. And some of those churches could double as football stadiums — hardly the image of street preachers spouting about the imminent demise of the planet in front of the Salvation Army mission.

All of this, as you might expect, has raised the hackles of almost everyone whose last name isn’t Parker. Jonah Goldberg took such umbrage to what his National Review colleague wrote he fired off a [2] searing blog post that took Parker to task not only for what she wrote but how she has portrayed herself as some kind of selfless martyr being picked on by meanies on the Internet:

I don’t know what’s more grating, the quasi-bigotry that has you calling religious Christians low brows, gorillas and oogedy-boogedy types or the bravery-on-the-cheap as you salute - in that winsome way - your own courage for saying what (according to you) needs to be said. Please stop bragging about how courageous you are for weathering a storm of nasty email you invite on yourself by dancing to a liberal tune. You aren’t special for getting nasty email, from the right or the left. You aren’t a martyr smoking your last cigarette. You’re just another columnist, talented and charming to be sure, but just another columnist. You are not Joan of the Op-Ed Page. Perhaps the typical Washington Post reader (or editor) doesn’t understand that. But you should, and most conservatives familiar with these issues can see through what you’re doing.

Goldberg has his own issues with the religious right as do many of us. But Parker’s assault is wrong on so many levels that it boggles the mind that she could be taken seriously by anyone except a few scatterbrained lefties.

Enter [3] Kevin Drum:

There will always be plenty of votes for a culturally conservative party. That’s not the problem. The problem is the venomous, spittle-flecked, hardcore cultural conservatism that’s become the public face of the evangelical wing of the GOP. It’s the wing that doesn’t just support more stringent immigration laws, but that turns the issue into a hate fest against La Raza, losing 3 million Latino votes in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just a little skittish about gay marriage, but that turns homophobia into a virtual litmus test, losing 6 million young voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just religious, but that treats belief as a precondition to righteousness, losing 2 million secular voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just nostalgic for old traditions, but that fetishizes the heartland as the only real America, losing 7 million urban voters in the process.

Gee. Reading that, one might be tempted to look for Torquemada waiting in the wings, itching to start the Inquisition. So that’s why all those millions and millions of voters snubbed the Republicans to vote for Obama? Seven million young people were turned off by the GOP position on gay marriage? I’ve got news for Kevin. The Republican position on gay marriage is exactly the same as Barack Obama’s and the Democrats; the answer is no.

And while the Democrats successfully demonized John McCain in the most dishonest ad of the campaign — a Spanish language spot that stated the bald faced lie that McCain’s position on immigration was exactly the same as Rush Limbaugh’s — the opposition’s use of the extremist, far right notion of closing the borders to all immigrants and rounding up the illegals already here may have been a clever political strategy but hardly reflects reality. It would be like the Republicans holding up Cindy Sheehan as a poster child for the Democrat’s position on national security.

So Parker’s defenders seem to have latched on to her idea that morality informed by religious belief has no place in the public square. Or if it does, it should be muzzled and told to keep the noise down because us secularists don’t want to hear that abortion is murder and gay marriage is considered to be wrong somewhere in the Bible. It makes us uncomfortable and we don’t like our beliefs challenged. I happen to think that abortion is not murder and that allowing gay marriage will probably not end western civilization as we know it. But to prevent people who believe strongly in these things from doing everything in their power to stop what they see as a moral abomination by taking direct, political action is scary wrong.

As Goldberg asks in another posting at [4] The Corner, what is so “oogedy boogedy” about this?

What aspects of the Christian Right amount to oogedy-boogedyism? I take oogedy-boogedy to be a pejorative reference to absurd superstition and irrational nonsense. So where has the GOP embraced to its detriment oogedy-boogedyism? With the possible exception of some variants of creationism (which is hardly a major issue at the national level in the GOP, as much as some on the left and a few on the right try to make it one), I’m at a loss as to what Kathleen is referring to. Opposition to abortion? Opposition to gay marriage? Euthanasia? Support for prayer in school?

Drum’s description of “venomous, spittle-flecked” churchgoers is exactly the point. The liberals have so demonized and misrepresented many of the Christian right’s attitudes and actual positions while raising the specter of an Iranian-style theocracy — a turn of events that is profoundly impossible — that as a political strategy, it has succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

For all their vaunted power in the Republican Party, the Christian right couldn’t get their man Mike Huckabee nominated. His primary victories were few and far between, his financial support a pittance compared to other candidates, and his organization almost entirely dependent on churchgoers. Their influence on the party platform notwithstanding, in the larger scheme of things, they are still a rather small, vocal, but important minority in the GOP. To make them into a looming, dangerous bogey man of the right is pure exaggeration.

Generally, people fear what they don’t understand. And that goes for most of us whether we are religious or secular, Democrat or Republican. Many secularists find the passionate even overwhelming beliefs of evangelicals frightening because they could not imagine believing anything so strongly themselves. For many, it is the notion that people with deeply held beliefs are less tolerant than those with less passionate or no beliefs at all. This is poppycock as tolerance for opposing views by liberals left much to be desired during the campaign when anyone tried to speak out about Barack Obama’s problematic associations. Several instances of what can only be termed thuggery directed toward those who spoke against the Democratic candidate gives the lie to the notion that the left is any more tolerant than the right.

Kathleen Parker and her little missives taking aim at conservative Christians as the number one cause of the Republican defeat might score her points with liberals and some libertarian conservatives. But kicking God out of the Republican party is a moronic notion. It isn’t necessary for starters. And it won’t bring the GOP back from the wilderness.

[SeekAndFind]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Ms. Parker is a Democratic "conservative" plant to disorient conservatives. Her opinions are very similar to that token "conservative" of the NY TIMES -- David Brooks.

In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that once she's done her requisite damage, she'll pull an Arianna Huffington and finally "out" herself as really a liberal in conservative clothing.

[pallis]

There are quite a few leftnuts planted in the Republican Party, all of whom need weeding out. The next four years will be a grand opportunity for conservatives and desperate Americans who won’t like Obama’s USSA. We need to get control of he GOP, and use it to fight this war.

[y6162]

Parker’s anti Christian bigotry is the same hate that was spewed on W. The Christian right has been the whipping boy for the MSM since the Moral Majority days.

The way to confront this bigotry is to highlight the issues important to Christians: pro family policies, resisting secular propaganda in public education, pro life, resisting the gay agenda and so on.

Palin was demonized for representing these potent wedge issues. That’s why she must be supported and protected.

Parker needs to receive the same treatment from the right as Palin got from the left. See how she likes it.

[Mamzelle]

If everyone on FR failed to hit on her articles, she’d be out of business.

[beckett]

I believe “oogedy-boogedy” derives from NASCAR and describes the feeling a driver gets when the race begins. “Pedal to the metal, oogedy-boogedy, let’s go.” It’s got nothing to do with Christian fundamentalists, except to the extent that they might be NASCAR fans. It’s a redneck term, popularized by former driver Darrell Waltrip, a color analyst for NASCAR television broadcasts.

[Tublecane]

“In this, the interregnum between the end of one administration and the beginning of another”

We have no interregnum. We always have a president. Look it up.

[60Gunner]

Nah. Arianna has something that Parker lacks: Perky hooters.

[Paleo Conservative]

Her opinions are very similar to that token "conservative" of the NY TIMES -- David Brooks.

Shouldn' that be "tokin' conservative"?

[Paleo Conservative]

Her opinions are very similar to that token "conservative" of the NY TIMES -- David Brooks.

Shouldn't that be "tokin' conservative"?

[BlueStateBlues]

Parker no longer has the heft to speak for conservatives or for the GOP. She joins the blathering crowd, and her voice fades into the echoes of the has-beens. I’ve no use for her, and have stopped reading her column.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Ms. Parker is a Democratic "conservative" plant to disorient conservatives. Her opinions are very similar to that token "conservative" of the NY TIMES

A few years ago, the Ithaca Journal started running her column. It took six months, and an editorial note, for me to realize Parker was supposed to be a conservative, and this was long before the Palin dustup.

[DPMD]

She gives it away in the phrase “oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party...” She is fluent in McCainspeak, which identified the same component as “agents of intolerance.” And witness the success the McCain GOP has had.

“Erstwhile” is defined as “former.”

It appears that Parker want to salvage the GOP in its now formerly -but not presently - conservative composition, and to do it by dumping the one conservative component she can identify. As a member of the WaPo writers group, she has finally found her long hoped for acceptance by, and her piece of the pie among, her beloved liberals.

Sounds fair. Let the conservatives move on, form a real conservative party, and let the “Parker republicans” eat hope. As for future, continued Parker GOP success, assume the position, Kathleen. Oh, I see you already have.

[FredZarguna]

While I bow to no one in my distaste for Kathleen Parker, the article is way off the mark. Simply put: Kathleen Parker is a pundit that no one knows or cares anything about, and she's decided (like a recent GOP Presidential candidate I might name) that the best way to garner an interest in your work is by trashing your team. That didn't work out so well for him, and eventually it won't work out for Kathleen, either; you're only a useful idiot to liberals for so long. Useful, that is. The idiocy goes on and on.

People have forgiven, say, Terrell Owens for doing this because unlike Parker, he actually has some talent.

For Kathleen, as for David Brooks (and I suspect, Peggy Noonan) the incessant drumbeat of their erudite and cosmopolitan acquaintances that the GOP is a party of rubes, hicks and snake handlers has has taken its toll. She wants friends. She wants to be noticed. But what to do? Kathleen doesn't understand economics, so she can't criticize the party for this, energy policy is way over her head, so she can't attack her erstwhile compadres for that, and the war, well the war is just so passe these days. So...

Kathleen will not direct her salvos where she really wants to, which is against Talk Radio. That is the 900 pound gorilla in the room for all of these print columnists. They send such clever little carrier pigeons of truth into the dark night of ignorance from atop the skyscrapers of dying institutions like the WaPo or the New York Times, knowing perfectly well that no one reads their pithy leg-tags but other soon-to-be unemployed columnists, most of them Lefties. Meanwhile, such Philistines as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity sign multi-million dollar contracts, Laura gets a test-week on Fox News, and Glenn Beck lands another TV gig.

Kathleen Parker's effect on conservatism is exactly zero. The best strategy in handling her is to ignore her, just as we did before she decided our oogedy-boogedy ideology wasn't worth defending anymore. As an agnostic and a highly educated man, Kathleen Parker offends me. I don't know about the afterlife, but in the current life, I'm throwing in with the right-wing Christians: I know exactly where they stand, I know exactly what they believe, and I've never had one back-stab me for the sake of career advancement.

[SeekAndFind]

As an agnostic and a highly educated man, Kathleen Parker offends me.

Do you know something about Kathleen that we, the public, don't ? :)

[euram]

To tell you the truth, I had never heard of Kathleen Parker until she started trashing Palin. I guess her influence in Flyover Country is rather limited, because none of my friends had ever heard of her either. I would bet she could walk down any street in America and not be recognized once. She would have to resort to carrying a sign proclaiming “I am Kathleen Parker,” and most would respond with “so?”

[nathanbedford]

Many secularists find the passionate even overwhelming beliefs of evangelicals frightening because they could not imagine believing anything so strongly themselves.

I think the author is wide of the mark. Remember, he is providing an explanation for secularists' reaction to evangelicals. He is not purporting to psychoanalyze fiscal conservatives or libertarians are even liberals who entertain some sort of belief in the divine. He is providing an explanation for secularists.

Secularists, of course, come in many flavors. A group that is hugely influential by virtue of its intelligence and dynamism are secular Jews. Of all the secularists I think it is fair to say that only secular Jews could be said to be "frightened" of evangelicals. Certainly, Jews are the only kind of secularists who could lay a plausible claim to an apprehension which the rest of us could view is reasonable. In view of the history of pogroms in Eastern Europe conducted at least in the name of the church, if not by the church itself, one can understand such a culture being wary of fanatical Christians.

It is striking that the more religious the Jews the less the tendency to be "frightened" of the evangelical right. Dennis Prager and Michael Medved are well-known examples of religious Jews who, to their credit, have explicitly reached out and embraced evangelicals and gone out of their way on their radio programs to disabuse other Jews of what I regard to be a prejudice against evangelicals. They affirm the evangelicals commitment to, for example, Israel. But the author was talking about secularists, as I said. Secular Jews are prominent in journalism and media and set our cultural tone through such vehicles as the West Wing, All in the Family, public television, and Elmer Gantry, Inherit the Wind, to name a few instances of celluloid disdain for evangelicals.

Do these secular Jews entertain animosity against evangelicals because they are "frightened" or for some other motivation? 20 years ago, before it was remotely cool in suburbia, I had a secular Jew, a self-acknowledged Marxist college professor, tell me that, "at Christmas the goyim get crazy, but at Easter they get dangerous." Was I not entitled to take offense at this remark? Turn it around, and apply it to Jews: "the Jews killed Christ," and one sees instantly how outrageous such a putdown of Christians is. But my professor was not trying to offend me, he was merely speaking unguardedly and unconsciously out of his culture. Implicit in the putdown was that evangelicals are unworthy of intellectual respect (the goyim get "crazy"). This attitude has leached out into our culture. Why is Sarah Palin so stupid? At the root of it all is her faith. My professor also presumed that evangelicals were dangerous (at Easter time they get dangerous). Notice how the media picked up on allegedly dangerous propensities of Sarah Palin to, for example, burn books in the library or meddle with evolution in the schools. It did not matter that these allegations were false in fact, they were assumed-my professor would have been reinforced in his prejudices.

There are other kinds of secularists besides Jewish secularists. There are fallenaway Protestants and fallenaway Catholics who, in many respects, are far more virulent in their disdain for evangelicals than are secular Jews. This is to be expected of renegades. But I don't think it has much to do with them being "frightened."

Secularists are not "frightened" by evangelicals because of the intensity of these Christians in their beliefs, they are frustrated by a set of a values, put down in writing, purporting to be absolute and not a relativist, and applicable to all people. They are frustrated because these values get in their way. They want what they want when they want it. Evangelicals values can be maddeningly frustrating to secularists, but hardly "frightening."

It is wrong for the author to say that the secularists can, "not imagine believing anything so strongly themselves." Secularists in fact believe very strongly in one thing: the absolute moral rectitude of their own belief system. They all want to play God and they all want to shape the world. They are convinced that their way is the right way and anything that interferes with that conception is not to be tolerated.

I will not give secularists any cover for their prejudice. I will not let secularists call prejudice "being frightened." There is nothing good or even excusable about their motivation, it is pure ego on a tear.

If they want to be intolerant of evangelicals let them put on their their sheets and ride by night for they are no less vicious than the Ku Klux Klan.

[Osage Orange]

Nice post............

[FredZarguna]

I know I'm jousting at windmills, but let me explain this for the one millionth time: in English, man is a synonym for a specific person. There is no such thing as a "chairperson," because that would refer to a man of non-specific identity chairing a meeting, which is laughably absurd.

A woman (womb-man) is not a masculine person with a womb -- again, a laughable implausibility for all but an astronomically small number of unfortunate genetically deformed individuals, but a person who possesses a womb.

Chairman, doorman, mailman, snowman (especially the last) do not refer to entities with Y chromosomes or penises, but simply to specific types of persons. Most liberal idiots don't know it, but English is one of -- probably the -- most gender neutral languages on earth, having long ago torn loose of our Germanic past. Even in modern usage, most gender differences are disappearing, not reappearing in our language, thus: female heroes (as opposed to heroines), every player is now an actor and one hardly hears of actresses, any more etc., etc. And that's just peachy with me.

Tongue firmly in cheek: I will not say Kathleen offends me as a person. She is an offensive person. I am also a person. But I am also a politically incorrect and highly educated person, and so, as a highly educated English speaking man, I am offended by Kathleen Parker. I don't have a "feminine side." My wife handles that. But if I did, I would be offended as a woman as well.

[x]

Maybe it's all a plot to get people saying "Oogedy Boogedy."

What is it, a new breakfast cereal or a video game?

[FredZarguna]

Ignoring the incongruity of NathanBedford commenting on the viciousness of the KKK, an excellent post, and here is the money quote:

I will not give secularists any cover for their prejudice. I will not let secularists call prejudice "being frightened." There is nothing good or even excusable about their motivation, it is pure ego on a tear.

Yet, I would clarify by saying that they are indeed frightened, though not at all by the beliefs or even actions of Evangelicals per se, but rather, by the challenge that such belief poses to their own belief system. Frequently I've had the experience that liberals in general and secular liberals in particular are determined, not to debate, or even defeat, but to exterminate beliefs with which they disagree. As with the outward projection of monstrous ego, I believe this is the result of a small worm eating away at the psyche, a persistence of conscience which cannot be altogether extinguished, which reminds them that what they believe is false.