Sunday, August 19, 2007

Thomas Friedman is not our Prime Minister's speech writer, is he?

What is this sentence doing in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Independence Day speech?

Unity in diversity are the wall and roof of the fabric of our nationhood.

In case you are wondering about the reference to TF, you should look at this review.

Posted at

4 comments:

  1. Rahul Siddharthan1:01 AM, August 20, 2007

    I suppose Pratibha Patil has the same speechwriter. From The Hindu's report: '[President Patil] invited countrymen to "look ahead to the glorious path of infinite possibilities that await India with open arms."'

    (The article ends by referencing "Vivekanada's" "immoral clarion call", but I'm guessing that wasn't the speechwriter's fault.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous3:07 AM, August 20, 2007

    If there is such a word "X" as opposite of favorite, then Tom would be my most X'ed writer.

    I have written about his simplistic observations, needless and mostly meaningless metaphors here -
    http://sharathrao.wordpress.com/2006/04/15/why-i-love-economics/

    Coincidentally, I linked to the same article last year :
    http://thebroadcaster.blogspot.com/2006/02/if-you-hate-tom-friedman.html

    And Abi, this HAS got to be best of the lot -
    http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2884

    - Sharath

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anant6:53 PM, August 20, 2007

    On mixed metaphors of the Flatman kind, I am reminded of an old one from my friend K. Sridhar, ``a oasis in the sea of madness.''

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous11:01 PM, August 20, 2007

    How about an "oasis in the sea of sanity" ? :-)

    - Sharath

    ReplyDelete

Would you like to comment on this post (or, in response to one of the comments)? If so, please note:

1. This blog does not allow anonymous comments (any more), so please use an open-id account to comment.

2. Comments on posts older than 15 days go into a moderation queue, and may take some time to appear.

Thank you for joining the conversation. Have your say: