subject: Appropriating Historical Persons and Events and Appropriating a Famous Phrase [print this page] The strategy in a print ad for a motel is similar. That ad rephrased the invitation on the Statue of Liberty ("Give me you're tired, you're poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . . Send these the homeless, tempest-tossed to me") to a come-on for the motel: "Give us you're tired, you're homeless, your weary, your thirsty." The motel did not invite "your poor." By reducing Emma Lazarus's stirring words to an invitation to choose one motel over another, the ad misappropriated a phrase we respect, a phrase that forms part of our cultural heritage.
Appropriating Historical Persons and Events and Appropriating a Famous Phrase
