Jon Rappoport: "Getting to the core of oo"

This is my story and I won�t budge from it.

The oo sound sells. It moves product.

Brand makers know that. They know what they�re doing.

Google (yeah, the large number googol). Zoom. Noom. Hulu. Winnie the Pooh. WHO (World Health Organization---worst oo product in the world). Foo Fighters. Doctor Who.

OO is from the ancient Greek. Means egg. Ovum.

And that�s the whole point. Oo is a baby sound.

Makes consumers REGRESS into infantile states of mind. Makes buying a CUTE thing.

She looks at a department store window. �Oo, I like that dress.�

When Attila was sitting on a hill overlooking a village, I don�t think he said to his lieutenant, �Oo, let�s burn that whole motherfucker down.�

Oo takes you back to baby stuff.

�Please don�t throw that poo at me, little Charley.�

�Oo, let�s all go to the zoo.�

Zoo, short for: �Zoological Gardens of the London Zoological Society, established 1828 in Regent's [wild animal] Park��

Some marketing guy thought it would be cute to call the place a zoo; customers would be magnetically attracted to the baby sound. Also, it was a distraction from the fact that the wild animals were imprisoned there---a form of torture.

The leopard, who would ordinarily tear you to shreds, becomes a woo woo object.

Today, most adults are not buying heavy tractors or mining equipment. They�re buying a lot of stuff. Any stuff. Well, babies reach out from their blankets for any pretty thing. Every pretty thing.

Be a baby. Goo goo. Reach out and buy this piece of crap. And this other piece of crap.

Moo cow milk. Cows don�t moo. Listen to one sometime. The moo sound has spawned countless products and industries.

And how many products have been developed from the legend of the tOOth fairy?

Now let�s go to a serious non-baby activity. Rodeo. I�m looking at a list of terms at prorodeo.com: Calf roper, barrelman, barrier, bullfighter, box, bronc rein, bulldogger, slack, flankman, header/heeler, mark out, roughstock, stock contractors, reride, pickup man, Go-round, dally, hazer, piggin� string.

There are more. Not one oo sound in the bunch.

Actually, I find two. Hooey and chute.

The rodeo business isn�t trying to make babies out of its customers.

For now, I�ll close with this. Boo. As in audiences and crowds booing. A citation from the etymology: �A little boy who comes across some geese suddenly will find himself hissed at immediately, and a great demonstration of defiance made by them, but if he can pluck up heart to cry 'bo!' loudly and advance upon them, they will retire defeated. The word 'bo' is clearly selected for the sake of the explosiveness of its first letter and the openness and loudness of its vowel.� � Walter W. Skeat, "Cry Bo to a Goose," Sept. 10, 1870.

But of course bo isn�t boo. Boo wouldn�t work on geese. It�s too soft. It�s like coo.

These days, boo is a marketing term. �Well Jim, listen to the home crowd boo. Franklin just dropped his third pass of the night. This time he would have had a clear path to the end zone.�

Daddy and his young son are watching the game at home. Daddy thinks, �Yeah, booing. Oo. That�s kind of fun. Little Pete and I should go to the stadium soon for his first live game.�

Of course, only some people in the stands are booing. A whole lot of drunken fans are screaming and cursing and spitting and throwing boxes of popcorn and full cups of beer and quite possibly heavy objects toward the field.

But that wouldn�t sell the game to daddy.

Oo would.

Cool.

-- Jon Rappoport