Kiddie songs

I just watched the juxtaposition of Bush's press conference with a balogna commercial and a train of thought pulled out of the station.

My life has been full of music. I sing all the time. For a while I did it rather well and formally. Nowadays it's mostly in the shower. But the first songs I memorized, the songs that I was asked, nay pressed to sing for company as a four year old boy, were two ditties whose provenance was and is unknown to me.

The first: "Trust and Obey." Lyrics: "Trust and obey, / For there's no other way / To be happy in Jesus / Than to trust and obey."

The second: "My Bologna Has a First Name." Lyrics: "My bologna has a first name. / It's O-S-C-A-R. / My bologna has a second name. / It's M-A-Y-E-R. / I love to eat it every day / And if you ask me why, I'll say / 'Cause Oscar Mayer has a way / With B-O-L-O-G-N-A.'"

That's right. Unthinking obedience to a first-century near eastern Hellenistic religious radical, and fervent praise for processed sandwich meat were the twin pillars of value upon which my childhood was based, and I think that they are discernible in my psyche even today.

I wondered, however, watching the all-too-rare Bush press conference, and the ensuing advertisements, if perhaps my experience is less contained to my family than I had thought. The country seems to be pressed into a nightmarish amalgam of my two kiddie songs.

Trust and obey. No, there's no other way. Cause Bush and Cheney have a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.

It even rhymes.