[Reader Request: FOOEY]

Latest in my stream of entirely worthy reader queries:

This web sight is a goldmine. I love, love, love it. Thank you, EW!
I figure if anyone knows this, it's you: when was Ellen's first documented use of FOOEY? It strikes me as a fairly recent development, but I haven't been nearly as methodical in my observations as you. --Kanye East

To begin, thank you for the kind words. I'm touched by how often people compliment my websight by thanking me. Without for a moment denying how ridiculous this blog is, I will say that being/doing ELLENWatch does feel like performing some kind of service. Hearing that others seem to view it the same way makes it...almost worth the time!

Now on to the question. Kanye is correct in the observation that FOOEY, especially as such a frequent interjection, is relatively new for Ellen. On Corporette, it seems to have become entrenched during spring/summer 2011. (For her recent activity beyond Corporette, our best central sources are two neglected Disqus profiles, which also show a great deal of FOOEY.) As of late, FOOEY is so common to Ellen posts that my FOOEY tag is almost worthless--i.e. selecting it on this blog will barely cull your results, displaying more posts than it leaves out. 

But it was not ever thus.

I am unabel to see most of Ellen's ABA Journal Online comments (if anyone can, and recognizes FOOEYing or its absence, please advise). However, on her own blawg, whose last post is dated June 2009, Ellen did not use FOOEY. Indeed, upon the announcement that she was being banned from the ABA Journal site, which precipitated the blawg, she left the following comment:

Ellen Barshevsky said...

I NEVER said that Alan was a LAWYER so pelase stop spreading disinformation on the internet.

If you actually READ your "FRIEND" "MOLLY"'s Blawg, you would already know that.

And if you do NOT believe in my EXISTANCE then I can NOT help you because I am TYPING THIS RIGHT NOW.

I think it is CLEAR you are trying to STOP people from subsribing to MY Blawg because you do not want to loose subscribors to ME. 

Clearly this was a FOOEY occasion. Ellen was absolutely furious, and as an internet phantom she was arguably fighting for her life as well. If she didn't say FOOEY here, or in chronicling her BAN on the blawg thereafter, when would she? I surmise it was not yet part of her lexicon. 

Thus researching this answer I came upon an interesting thread in Ellen history: FOOEY emerged, and almost instantly became an Ellen trademark, as part of the process of establishing and contesting the regular presence of Corporette Ellen--who may or may (likely) not be the same "original" Ellen of the ABA and blawg. As regular readers know, I have tentatively quit the ongoing struggle to determine which Ellen is "real", but I must at least acknowledge it now. The earliest FOOEYing on Corporette appeared in a May 2011 Ellen post that was immediately challenged as fake. (One 2010 exchange including a FOOEY has Ellen being exceptionally combative and thus also standing out from her usual self.) On the next occasion in 2011, nobody seems to have called Fraud, but I myself registered doubts due to the implausible timing of a reported "new boyfriend." Thereafter, though, as of some words of encouragement for NY bar exam takers on June 4, 2011, FOOEY has been Ellen-normative. (Not necessarily in all caps, of course.) Recall that both/all sides in the recent war of who gets to be Ellen have used FOOEY with equal confidence, and that Lourine, spawn of who-knows-which Ellen, has shared that it came from Ellen's Grandma Leyeh.

Yet again, we return to the theme of Ellen as an exercise in democratic collaboration. FOOEY has won, becoming a steadfast element of Ellen, if not her primary signature, but it was a process in fits and starts. I have written many times that despite all her characteristic obliviousness, Ellen(s) clearly take(s) requests, responding to and playing with readers in a way that somehow does garner more lovers than haters. Given how commonly Corporette commenters now use it, with even Kat FOOEYing once to date, not to mention Ellen's "Just say FOOEY and move on" becoming shorthand motto and mug-for-purchase twice over, FOOEY may be Ellen's signal achievement (thus far) in participatory experiential art.