Last week, I left the urbane and hoity-toity environs of Washington, DC for a little vacation in areas that were a bit more rustic. I noticed a popular trend of t-shirts and hats that featured variations on the phrase, “get 'er done,” very often in conjunction with the Confederate flag.
What on earth is the meaning of this? I’m assuming that it’s some kind of Southern pride catch phrase, but I can’t quite grasp it. Is “get 'r done” the 21st century version of “the South will rise again,” or is it a more generic phrase that is now being taken to new meanings by associating it with the Confederacy?
The comedian “Larry The Cable Guy” uses “Git 'r done” as a catchphrase. It’s not in-and-of-itself racists, but rather a kind of redneck “Just Do It!” (the Nike catchphrase?)
Others may have co-opted the “Git 'r done” phrase for their own use.
About a year ago I’m at my mother-in-law’s house in the woods in southeastern Missouri. Redneck central. My MIL and her side of the family are cultured, polite, educated people, but they’re still into huntin’ and mud-boggin’ and whatnot.
Anyway, one Saturday morning I walk into the dining room at MIL’s house and my wife, my MIL, and MIL’s mother and father are sitting there doing this-n-that. MIL says, “Hey there’s going to be mud bogs today. You should go to that.” I politely told MIL that mudbogs weren’t quite my thing and I’d just watch TV instead. MIL tells me, “You’re gonna have to get into mudbogs and things like that if you’re going to marry into this redneck family!” Then, without missing a beat, MIL and the three other people at the table all said, in unison, “Git R Done!”
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For my money, “Git R Done” is a nonsense saying that means something along the lines of “do what you have to do.” For example:
LARRY: What do you want to do this afternoon?
JEFF: How about going fishing?
LARRY: Git R Done!
“not in-and-of-itself” racist? Is it in any way racist? Does it have racist connotations? Does race have any role in the conversation, other than the fun we can have making assumptions that are themselves stereotypes?
Chill the fuck out, PC Nazi. Ravenman asked if it was connected in any way with the Confederacy or “The South Shall Rise Again,” two things often associated with racism. I was just assuring him that in it’s “original incarnation” as a comedian’s catch-phrase it wasn’t rooted in either of those.
Maybe I’m exposing my rural Tennessee roots, but how hard is “git r done” to understand. It’s not like it’s a secret “nudge nudge wink wink” handshake. Sometimes things are exactly as they seem.
I’m quite chilled; I’m just annoyed that you felt it neccessary to defend it from a suggestion that was never made. ISTM rather like someone asking where the term “homies” came from, and getting the answer that “it is not in and of itself associated with drug dealing.”
If it were a bumper sticker, absent any other context, I would simply wonder, “Get WHAT done?”
But literally every place I saw it, save but one, it was associated with a Confederate flag. (The one exception was a t-shirt that had a Playboy bunny head logo, the word “PLAYGIRL,” and then “Get Er Done” written in script below that. I still can’t figure that one out.) Anyway, the correlation of that catchphrase and the stars and bars strikes me as odd (though I’m not a particular fan of Confederate nostalgia anyway; YMMV).
When I was fresh out of high school, I heard the phrase used on construction jobs. As in we would be talking about what needed to be done, and how much we could finish in a particular amount of time. More than once, I heard "Let’s git 'r done and go home. or words to that effect.
In other words, lets bust our hump for a specified amount of time, and then knock off / move on to the next item.
This was long before LTCG.
In and of itself the phrase isn’t hard to understand. Used in a conversation, like in Rick’s example, it’s pretty obvious - and that’s how most people would figure to use it.
However, when I start seeing hats, shirts, bumper stickers and such with this catchphrase everywhere, then find out it’s associated with Larry the Cable Guy more questions arise. How is this associated with this guy? Is it a punchline? How on earth could it be a punchline? Does it reference a specific comedy bit? What the hell is going on?
