"Is this a great country, or what?"

Fred Shapiro fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Fri Mar 17 01:51:21 UTC 2006


On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Baker, John wrote:

>        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.

Searches of ProQuest, Newspaperarchive & Nexis suggest that Night Shift
may well have popularized the phrase.

Fred Shapiro


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   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
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