Poor Me, Poor Me, Pour Me a Drink
Gately’s not too agonized and feverish not to recognize gross self-pity when he hears it, wraith or no. As in the slogan ‘Poor Me, Poor Me, Pour Me A Drink.’
Context
Gately auditing the wraith's confession through hard-won program ears, and diagnosing it instantly: for all its tragic grandeur, the tirade is self-pity, and the slogan he answers it with — the pun that turns "poor me" into "pour me a drink" — is the doctrine's blunt warning that self-pity is the disease's own on-ramp. The clichés the wraith can't stand are the exact tool Gately uses, correctly, to see through him.