Nobody Does It Like Sara Lee?

[David Bowie]

From:    Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
> At 08:45 PM 4/17/2005 -0400, Bethany Dumas(?) wrote:

>> I gave my intro to lx students a question on a recent test
>> requiring analysis of the advertising slogan, "Nobody Doesn't Like
>> Sara Lee." It turned out that until they saw the words on the test
>> - and checked some URLs -- some of them thought the slogan was
>> "Nobody Does It Like Sara Lee."

>> (We never know what we are really teaching, do we?)

> Only some of them?  I always heard it as "does it like"--presumably
> bakes like she does, that is.  Two reasons, perhaps: The negative
> nasal is hard to hear in song.  But more importantly, I couldn't say
> "nobody doesn't like"; I'd say "there's nobody who doesn't like ...."
>  So my grammar simply wouldn't "hear" the sentence you're citing.
> Does anyone know where the slogan originated?

> This reminds me again of the song "It's not unusual to be loved by
> anyone"--totally ungrammatical for me.

For my part, i never knew the slogan was anything other than "nobody
does it like..." until i learned the shocking truth on this very list
three or four years ago.

This is, BTW, *not* because the actual slogan's ungrammatical to me--i
can happily use the "nobody doesn't like" construction. However, since
i'd only ever heard the slogan, and since "Nobody does it like Sara Lee"
makes perfect sense as a slogan, my initial mishearing presumably became
lodged in my brain--it's *still* heard for me to hear the correct
jingle, even though i know what it's supposed to be now.

--
David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.