"Is this a great country, or what?"

[Baker, John]

        It was used in the movie Night Shift (1982).  From IMDb:

Chuck Lumley: As we sit here and idly chat, there are women, female
human beings, rolling around in strange beds with strange men, and we
are making money from that.
Bill Blazejowski: Is this a great country, or what?

        I don't know if that was the origin, but it must have been a
vector.

John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:03 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Is this a great country, or what?"

Russian emigre' comic Yakov Smirnoff was using the tagline, "What a
great country !" about twenty years ago. But I'm not sure about the
specific form you're looking for.

  JL

Geoffrey Nunberg <nunberg at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Geoffrey Nunberg
Subject: "Is this a great country, or what?"
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Does anybody have an idea what the source of this is?

Geoff Nunberg

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