My first thought was that it refers to the Irving Berlin song "I Say It's Spinach and the Hell With It," and it is. But then I realized something I had never thought of before, i.e. that the Berlin song was probably also a reference to something else. Thanks to Google, Voilà.
It all started with a New Yorker cartoon in 1928. (Actually, since the New Yorker cartoons usually, or at least frequently, have some cultural relevance, I could probably dig deeper if I felt the need to be the the authority on this subject.) The Irving Berlin Song was written in, I believe, 1931. This You Tube presentation is an awful big-band recording of the Berlin song, and the Popeye-Spinach connection is silly, if predictable, but I like the fact that you can also see the 1928 cartoon briefly at the beginning of the slide show.
It's also curious that in 1928, broccoli was the desirable vegetable. Now it's apparently popular to deride it. I think it started with Bush Senior, when he went public as a broccoli hater.
The Berlin lyrics are:
[VERSE:]
We must keep smiling and play the game
While life keeps hurrying on
For there was trouble before we came
'Twill be here after we're gone
So we'll just have to prepare
To snap our fingers at care
[REFRAIN:]
Long as there's you, long as there's me
Long as the best things in life are free
I say it's spinach and the hell with it
The hell with it, that's all!
Long as I'm yours, long as your mine
Long as there's love and a moon to shine
I say it's spinach and the hell with it
The hell with it, that's all!
There must be rain to pitter-patter
Things don't come on a silver platter
What does it matter?
Long as there's you, long as there's me
Long as the best things in life are free
I say it's spinach and the hell with it
The hell with it, that's all!
5 comments:
OK, I confess that I had absolutely no idea what you were talking about when you posted the first one.
Admitting that I am culturally impaired is easy enough for me, but this is arcane enough that even you must not be surprised that it stumped us.
There is some deeper message in all this, but I'm not getting that, either!
Thanks, love it.
I actually thought somebody might know the Berlin song. I have Michael Feinstein´s version on my ipod.
I´ve been wondering about the New Yorker editor who decided to run this most-recent cartoon. Presumably he understood all of the earlier references, but what did he expect of the average reader? Would he have thought it was funny enough to run just as a Scalia reference? Probably not.
Note: for "he," read "he/she"
While I am, as are most Americans, pretty comfortable with a level playing field for the sexes, if we were to do a survey/scientific analysis of the sex that most likes obscure trivia like this, my guess would be that men like it more and your pronoun would be correct as interpreted to mean the masculine.
Often, it seems to me that it is awkward to use "he" or "he/she". They just don't read right, so I reconstruct the sentence to use some neutral-gender way to say it.
Maybe there are studies like this? Should we have a problem with generalities about families, genders? Like, "men like to drink beer and hunt walrus more than women." or "Women like to shop for shoes and handbags more than men." Are those just sexist, banned comments? How about "Chinese are more likely to be lactose intolerant?" Is that racist? Or simply a medical fact that can be quite useful?
Thoughts?
The more I am familiarized with girls fastpitch softball, the more it becomes a situation where the "little things" are gender-specific. For instance, colleges are limited to something like 15 baseball scholarships, so they give 15 scholarships for softball because of Title IX. However, they will have, maybe, 25 walkons for men, but virtually none for women. It seems that men just want to be part of the activity, but if women are not playing, they leave because they have better things to do.
Bob - Yeah, I thought about constructing a gender-neutral sentence, but nobody reads these comments.
Either you're over thinking or I'm doing the opposite, insofar as gender generalizations are concerned. I was only thinking in terms of the likelihood that a New Yorker editor was male or female and decided it was probably a toss up.
Gosh, that would be a first...me overthinking something.
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