[Ads-l] "Love It or Leave It" antedating

[Jonathan Lighter]

YBQ: Vietnam War

1940  _Knoxville News-Sentinel
_
 (Sept. 29) C-9: While driving through Chattanooga last week we saw a
sticker on an outline map of the United States, and [sic] contained the
words, "Love It or Leave It." Good advice, we thought, and wished that a
number of trouble makers in this country would take the hint.

(Rptd. from the _Clinton [Tenn.] Courier_.)

1941 Walter Winchell, syn. column in _Augusta [Ga.] Chronicle_ (July 11) 8:
H. I. Phillips and many other admirers of a billboard slogan in Miami (and
elsewhere) have testified that it is the best patriotic slogan they have
ever encountered, to wit: "America - Love It Or Leave It."  From this
column in the N. Y. Mirror of Sept. 14, 1936: "The U.S.A. would be a better
place to live in if all the people who didn't like it would leave it - to
the rest of us who love it!"

1953 _Cleveland Plain Dealer_ (Mar. 6) 13: Seems to me the government would
do well to adopt the slogan invented by Cort Middleton of our town:
"America - Love It Or Leave It!"

1953  _Springfield [Mass.] Union_ (May 2) 24: State Junior Vice-Commander
Irving K. Stackpole of Somerville ... noted the reasons for Loyalty Day,
and emphasized the slogan adopted for treatment of Communists in the United
States: "America, love It or leave it."

Etc.

JL

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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