Sunday, April 27, 2008

Land(s) of Milk and Honey?

Noted without comment:

In today's Times of India, Washington correspondent Chidanand Rajghatta makes an interesting observation (rare :-) !!) -- The United States has traditionally been called the Land of Milk and Honey -- however India surpassed the US in milk production ages ago and China is the world's largest producer of honey...
So shouldn't India and China be together called the Land(s) of Milk and Honey rather than the US ;-) ?

6 comments:

Rahul Siddharthan said...

Hrrm. I could have sworn the "land of milk and honey" was supposed to be Israel -- this is in Exodus 3:8, long before the USA existed. Or are Israel and the USA indistinguishable now?

Chidanand Rajghatta has to be one of the worst journalists ever. I haven't read him for a while, but most of his columns used to begin "Leading American columnists are beginning to say that..." before copy-pasting practically an entire article by Thomas Friedman or Jim Hoagland or someone like that. (Usually with attribution, but that didn't make it any better; besides, he'd imply that this is the chorus in all US media, without quoting anyone else on the matter.)

AmOK said...

Kind sir, I would like to differentiate as I integrate. I believe the LOMH is the place where such things are consumed, not produced. Could you kindly review your facts and advise if indeed the US is still the LOMH?

Rahul Basu said...

Bertie*, I couldn't agree with you more about Rajghatta. He is exactly as you describe. This was, of course, tongue in cheek and, in fact, given his record, it might turn out he has copied this wisecrack from somewhere without attribution!

*About Exodus, alas, Bertie, I wasn't as good as you at school.

Kind Sir Oak, it is a sad reflection of these degenerate times we live in, that my (copied) wisecracks get the largest number of comments (all of 2) compared to other more ponderous articles :-( !!!!

Anant said...

Serves you right for reading TOI. But what choice does one have with the Thinking Indian's newspaper, Deccan Chronicle, and a few other rags like that. Of course you could subscribe to the Statesman from Calcutta and/or Telegraph.

By the way, it will take some time before you start attracting comments. In any case, your weak excuse as of 10 days or so ago about writing on your personal page `As I please' rather than on the new blog was that you did not want comments?! Maybe readers have read your mind. BTW, on your home page, you should now give the link to the all new `As I please' page, if you have not done so already.

Love, Anant

Rahul Siddharthan said...

No, Gussie, I didn't learn Exodus in school -- I learned this factoid via Google. I only knew "milk and honey" referred to Israel -- perhaps because of the George Mikes book of that name.

AmOK said...

Very very Kind Sir, you fret so much but truthfully, all answers lie, in statistics. We (the people or proles) find it hard to understand your (the outlier) blogospores, which do not germinate readily in our minds. Therefore the peak in the Comments distribution will be at the point of maximal banality. Regression to the mean, instead of progression to meaning. The ultimate proof of this is TV. Hence fret not but rejoice in small numbers of comments.