Chopping and Slashing.
Chopping and Slashing.

Back in the early ’70s, the Southern New England airwaves were carpet-bombed on weekends with McNiff Furniture spots, produced and aired by mainstream album-rock station WAAF (“New England’s four-channel music station”) in Worcester.

For air talent these so-bad-they’re-good spiels used two hired guns, one Black and one white, both with Boston accents, reading stupid lines like “Never before has anyone been so desperate! Nevah befoah has anyone been so sinceah!”. (Note that this was years before Gen X invented irony.)

Whatever pathetic depths their emoting reached, the McNiff “brothers” could always be counted on to go out with the solemnly intoned tag line “Chopping and slashing. Chopping and slashing.” The phrase became a punchline for an entire subculture — one of the ’AAF jocks even ad-libbed a news story’s text to make it refer to “sorting and filing. Sorting and filing.”

Following is a typical script, faked from memory. The setting, two cops on patrol, is suggested by the background music (Theme from Shaft).

Cop #1 (Black):  He’s loose! He’s gone! He’s escaped!
Cop #2 (white):  Who’s escaped.
Cop #1: McNiff! You know, McNiff the Choppuh. The guy with savings up to eighty-two percent.
Cop #2: Oh, my good golly. What do we do?
Cop #1: Find him fast! He’s got an axe! He was last seen high-tailing it to Clinton.
Cop #2: You mean McNiff’s Furniture in Clinton?
Cop #1: Yeah! He’s gonna do more chopping and slashing of prices. Their dinettes; their living room sets; their bedrooms — all will be chopped even more, if we don’t catch him.
Cop #2: {something along the lines of: Then let’s roll}
Cop #1 (suddenly changing tack): No, wait! Let him go!
Cop #2: Why?
Cop #1: I’ve gotta furnish my house! We’ll give him an owah’s head start — then we’ll go to McNiff’s and buy out the store.
Cop #2: Wait, turn here and pick up my wife. We need some furniture too!
Both, in unison: Chopping and slashing. Chopping and slashing.