"...relax and enjoy it" and manuscript forgery

[Jonathan Lighter]

I don't follow you, Larry. By "variants," I meant close verbal variations rather than conceptually related "proverbs."

  JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: "...relax and enjoy it" and manuscript forgery
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At 12:47 PM -0800 11/28/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>I'm speaking of the phrase whose form is generally, "If rape is
>inevitable, you may as well relax and enjoy it." Over the years I've
>encountered the phrase and variants frequently enough (i.e., maybe a
>half dozen times, not including those reported here) that I feel
>safe in characterizing it as "proverbial," at least in the broad and
>fuzzy sense of that term employed by lexicographers.
>
> If taken literally, of course, the "proverbial advice" could only
>be another contribution of the sociopath commmunity to our national
>language. But it's clearly not intended to be taken literally. The
>idea - to belabor the obvious - is that if an unpreventable or
>unavoidable wrong is about to be done to you, you're better off
>putting up with it (and possibly turning it somehow to your
>advantage) than resisting to no purpose.

Well, yes, but do we really want to say "If rape is inevitable, you
may as well lie back and enjoy it" or whatever is simply a variant of
e.g. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"? Or how when God
closes a door, He opens a window? Or that one Reagan was fond of
quoting about the optimist who, given a barn filled with manure,
starts to shovel cheerfully because "There must be a horse in here
somewhere"? Somehow the rape one doesn't really seem to be on the
same footing...

L

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