[Ads-l] "You [X] 'em, we [X-rhyme] 'em"

[Dave Hause]

Bawdy house:  "We splay 'em, you lay 'em."

-----Original Message----- 
From: MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US)
Sent: Monday, June 5, 2017 11:40 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "You [X] 'em, we [X-rhyme] 'em"

Funeral Home:  "You slay 'em, we lay 'em."

>
> Back around 1980-81, I had a university acquaintance who would frequently 
> answer with a selection from among these sayings:
>
> "City Morgue: You kill 'em, we chill 'em!"
>
> "City Morgue: You stab' em, we slab 'em!"
>
> "Abortion Clinic: You rape 'em, we scrape 'em. No fetus can beat us."
>
> Now I read in Hugh Gusterson's informative _Drone_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 
> 2016), p. 9, that,
>
> "'You Track 'Em, We Whack 'Em,' is the informal motto of the team at the 
> National Security Agency that collects and analyzes ... cell phone
> data [that may serve to identify the whereabouts of prominent 
> terrorists]."
>
> Googling "You kill 'em, we chill 'em" turns up approx. one zillion 
> instances of this pattern.
>
> How far back can this black-humor genre be traced?
>
> JL

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org