X is the Y of Z

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X is the Y of Z

Postby stefano » Sat May 08, 2010 5:45 am

A while ago I came across the Rosa Parks of Rosa Parks blogs, the author of which collects quotes by clueless journalists calling celebrities "the Rosa Parks of" various fields of struggle or quasi-struggle. There we can learn that Rob Lowe is the "Rosa Parks of leaked celebrity porn", a woman called Connie Szefczek is the "Rosa Parks of the anti-telemarketing movement", someone by the name of Laurie Hall is the "Rosa Parks of women dealing with porn addiction", Gwen Jacobs is the "Rosa Parks of Canadian nudism" and Ellen DeGeneres is the "Rosa Parks of TV entertainment".

Insightful stuff, but the Rosa Parks of blogs (apparently unaware that there are several Rosa Parkses of blogs, and that one has claimed the title of Rosa Parks of the genre) takes it further, collecting all manner of sad similes of the type "X is the Y of Z". May is the Jimmy Carter of months, John Paul I was the Barack Obama of popes, Heinz ketchup is the Zeus of fast food condiments, macaroons are the Zooey Deschanel of bite-sized desserts, Daniel Ortega is the Burt Reynolds of Latin American dictators, China is the Mike Tyson of fiscal restraint, and so on.

This type of formulation is called a snowclone, apparently, and Mark Liberman of Language Log has some great examples in the field of geography:

In any case, a quick web search reveals that Uruguay is far from alone in being identified as "the Switzerland of South America":

[Bariloche, Argentine] features forests, spectacular glaciers, and mountains surrounding gorgeous lakes, earning its nickname, "the Switzerland of South America."

Puerto Montt is the capital of Chile's exquisite lake district, the "Switzerland of South America."

[Ecuador] is truly the land of eternal springtime, and the "Switzerland of South America."

Ushuaia is often referred to as "Argentine Switzerland" or the "Switzerland of South America"

Lebanon was once called "The Switzerland of the Middle East" and Chile the "Switzerland of South America."

[Puerto Varas, Chile] is known as the "Switzerland of South America," ...

And Isaiah Bowman, South America: A Geography Reader, 1915, puts forward a case where the relation is symmetric, at least in the sense that X is the Y of Y's superordinate category at the same time that Y is the X of X's superordinate category:

For this reason Bolivia is sometimes called the "Switzerland of South America", but it would be more nearly correct to call Switzerland the Bolivia of Europe ...

Web search reveals that Guinea, Uganda, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Burundi, Lesotho, Rwanda, and Zaire are among the places called "the Switzerland of Africa".

A search for {"the Switzerland of"} turns up 34,400 hits, many of them not at all geographical. For example, {"The Switzerland of * software"} alone yields 4,900 hits.

And we would be remiss in failing to note that Liechtenstein is sometimes called "the Switzerland of Switzerland".

Of course, it's not only Switzerland that places the role of Y in geographical snowclones of the form X is the Y of Z. It's well know, for example, that Belgium is the New Jersey of Europe -- except that web search shows that France, Holland, Albania, Wales, England, and Russia are all competitors for this title.

There are 101,000 hits for {"the Athens of"}: Lexington (KY) was once known as "the Athens of the West", and Nashville (TN) has often been called "the Athens of the South"; while "the Athens of the North" is Edinburgh (Scotland) , unless it's Munich, Vilnius (Lithuania), or Belfast (Northern Ireland); and "the Athens of the East" might be Alexandria (Egypt), Antioch (Syria), or Madurai (India), among others. "The Athens of America" is what some (Bostonians?) call Boston. The "Athens of Africa" might be Fez, Dakar, Freetown, Timbuktu, or Cyrene.

Bringing the strands together, we find that Zurich and Basel compete for the title of "the Athens of Switzerland", but no page indexed by Google has yet speculated as the identity of "the Switzerland of Athens". (However, "the Switzerland of Greece" is variously identified as Evritania, Karpenissi, or Arcadia.)
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Re: X is the Y of Z

Postby annie aronburg » Sun Jun 20, 2010 5:44 pm

Image
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
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Re: X is the Y of Z

Postby Searcher08 » Mon Jun 21, 2010 6:03 pm

One of my favourite books is titled
'Today is the tomorrow of yesterday'
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Re: X is the Y of Z

Postby Simulist » Sat Jun 26, 2010 9:56 pm

Al Gore is the Larry David of "happy endings."
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
    — Alan Watts
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Re: X is the Y of Z

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Jun 26, 2010 10:45 pm

Ghana is the Germany of the USA's England.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
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Re: X is the Y of Z

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Jun 27, 2010 12:00 pm

Germany is still the Germany of England.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
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Re: X is the Y of Z

Postby stefano » Thu Oct 09, 2014 10:14 am

Image

What It Is
By Teju Cole

Is Ebola the ISIS of biological agents? Is Ebola the Boko Haram of AIDS? Is Ebola the al-Shabaab of dengue fever? Some say Ebola is the Milosevic of West Nile virus. Others say Ebola is the Ku Klux Klan of paper cuts. It’s obvious that Ebola is the MH370 of MH17. But at some point the question must be asked whether Ebola isn’t also the Narendra Modi of sleeping sickness. And I don’t mean to offend anyone’s sensitivities, but there’s more and more reason to believe that Ebola is the Sani Abacha of having some trouble peeing. At first there was, understandably, the suspicion that Ebola was the Hitler of apartheid, but now it has become abundantly clear that Ebola is actually the George W. Bush of being forced to listen to someone’s podcast. Folks, this thing is serious. The World Health Organization calls it the Putin of Stalin. In layperson’s terms, that’s like saying it’s the Stalin of U2. Now we are seeing the idea thrown around that it could be the Black Hand of the Black Death, not to mention the Red Peril of the Red Plague. If you don’t want to go that far, you have to at least admit that Ebola is the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb of Stage IV brain cancer. At this point, it’s very possible that Ebola could become airborne and turn into the Tea Party of extreme climate events. Throughout the country of Africa, Ebola is the Abu Ghraib of think pieces. Look, I’m not the politically correct type, so I’m just going to put this out there: Ebola is the neo-Nazism of niggling knee injuries. The kind of threat it poses to the American way of life essentially makes it the North Korea of peanut allergies. I’m not going to lie to you, and I don’t care what color you are, you could be red, green, blue, purple, whatever; you need to understand that Ebola (the Obama of Osama, but don’t quote me) is literally the “Some of my best friends are black” of #NotAllMen. But the burning question no one has raised yet is whether Ebola is the Newsweek of halitosis. We’ll go to the phones in a moment and get your take on this. But first let me open the discussion up to our panel and ask whether Ebola is merely the Fox News of explosive incontinence, or whether the situation is much worse than that and Ebola is, in fact, the CNN of CNN.
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