snowclone: Today ___, tomorrow the world

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 10/25/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> At 1:22 PM -0400 10/25/07, David Bowie wrote:
> >On 10/14/07, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Today ___, tomorrow the world
> >
> >>Google reports about 242,000 hits for "tomorrow the world".
> >
> >>Original: "Today Germany, tomorrow the world!", a translation of the Nazi
> >>party slogan "Heute Deutschland, morgen die Welt!" (1, 2)
>
> A variant from Leonard Cohen (the "I'm Your Man" album):
>
> First we take Manhattan,
> Then we take Berlin

Two other New York-oriented variants...

* In the original version of Mel Brooks' "The Producers" (1968), at
the premiere of "Springtime for Hitler" the playwright Franz Liebkind
announces, "Today Broadway, tomorrow..." and then trails off making
vague hand gestures.

* The 1976 debut album by The Ramones featured "Today Your Love,
Tomorrow The World."  Wikipedia says the song "was inspired by Dee
Dee's youth in Germany, as well as Johnny's fascination with old WWII
movies. Originally titled 'I'm a Nazi, Baby' the song features tongue
in cheek lyrics about Nazism, such as, 'I'm a shock trooper in a
stupor, yes I am/ I'm a Nazi schatze, you know I fight for the
fatherland'. This song, along with "Blitzkrieg Bop", mark the first
appearance of Nazi themes and imagery in Punk music (even though Joey
was Jewish)."


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org