"He may be a _____, but he's our _____"

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Sat Aug 4 13:22:29 UTC 2007


On Aug 3, 2007, at 12:04 PM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake wrote:

> List members have previously touched on one of my favorite political
> observations, which Fred includes in his _Yale Book of
> Quotations_.  There,
> the attribution is to FDR [p. 647]:
>
> [Of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza:]  He may be a son of a
> bitch, but
> he's *our* son of a bitch.  [Quoted in *Washington Quarterly*,
> Summer 1982]...

snowclone alert!  in the first 40 google webhits for {"he may be a *
but he's our"} i get 14 different fillers for
   He may be a X, but he's our X
(in addition to versions of "son of a bitch"):
   jackass. bastard (one hit attributing this to FDR, of Somoza),
fool, crook, jerk, lunatic, monster, scorpion, swine, terrorist,
sleazebucket, scumbag, butcher, devil

arnold

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