[Ads-l] "You [X] 'em, we [X-rhyme] 'em"

MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US) william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL
Mon Jun 5 16:40:42 UTC 2017


Funeral Home:  "You slay 'em, we lay 'em."

> 
> Back around 1980-81, I had a university acquaintance who would frequently answer with a selection from among these sayings:
> 
> "City Morgue: You kill 'em, we chill 'em!"
> 
> "City Morgue: You stab' em, we slab 'em!"
> 
> "Abortion Clinic: You rape 'em, we scrape 'em. No fetus can beat us."
> 
> Now I read in Hugh Gusterson's informative _Drone_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016), p. 9, that,
> 
> "'You Track 'Em, We Whack 'Em,' is the informal motto of the team at the National Security Agency that collects and analyzes ... cell phone
> data [that may serve to identify the whereabouts of prominent terrorists]."
> 
> Googling "You kill 'em, we chill 'em" turns up approx. one zillion instances of this pattern.
> 
> How far back can this black-humor genre be traced?
> 
> JL

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