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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I didn’t see a subforum for snowclones so my apologies if this is too far off topic.
Reading <a href=”http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20081031_Swatting_attacks_on_fruit_flies_and_science.html”>a critique</a> of Sarah Palin’s derision of fruit fly research, I noticed this trope:
“As a geneticist, I’ve worked on fruit flies in the laboratory for three decades. I know the fruit fly. The fruit fly is a friend of mine. And believe me, Sarah Palin doesn’t know anything about fruit flies.”
and realised I’ve seen that used a lot (frequency illousion!).
Something along the lines of “I knew X. X was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no X.” with X originally a person (for some reason I’m thinking “Reagan” as patient one.)
Is there anything in this or am I just imagining things?
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You’re thinking of “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy”, famously spoken by Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle in 1988. And yes, the fruit fly remark is definitely a reference to this.
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Sili wrote:
I didn’t see a subforum for snowclones so my apologies if this is too far off topic.
Would you like to have a subforum for snowclones? Is there enough demand for one? Let me know – it’s not hard to create one.
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Chris Waigl wrote:
Sili wrote:
I didn’t see a subforum for snowclones so my apologies if this is too far off topic.
Would you like to have a subforum for snowclones? Is there enough demand for one? Let me know – it’s not hard to create one.
I don’t post often enough – I don’t know if the interest is there. I just wasn’t sure if people talked about them here.
And of course it was Kennedy, thank you. I see from the WP article that ” [...] some variation on Bentsen’s remark, have become a part of the political lexicon as a way to deflate politicians or other individuals perceived as thinking too highly of themselves.”
But it looks like it’s steadily moving out of the politico sphere.
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Maybe this would be a good place to plug the Snowclone Database: http://snowclones.org/
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That was one of my favorite, favorite moments in debate.
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