THE NOAM-MOBILE
Did you know that Noam Chomsky has a blog? I can't be sure if I knew before this weekend, but if not, hat tip: Ben Kerstein. Apparently he's been doing it on an intermittent basis since June of this year. Simply, that I don't really know if I was familiar with this or not is a good sign.
In fact, I'm actually pleased to have the old leftist himself on the internet, because for one thing it brings his inflated stature down to our level. Chomsky's quickie paperbacks typically comprise interview and lecture transcripts and rarely add up to anything more than capitalistwarmongeringAmerica-bashing. But on the web, Chomsky has to sit down and write a post, one letter after the other, like you or me. And when he does, he gets very boring very fast.
His lectures rarely stay on one topic for more than a few seconds, which can be maddening to rebut -- by the time you have a comment on his interpretation of French withdrawal from Indochina, he's off saying something crazier about U.S. activities in post-war Germany. The blog allows time to response, and commentary is built-in. At first you might think Chomsky would do well in cyberspace, where hypertext would allow him to spin off arguments in different directions by
providing links. But Chomsky never links. And when you think about it that second time, you realize that Chomsky doesn't want you to spend a lot of time comparing his argments against themselves.
This, especially after I spent a few minutes looking through the archives. Dare I say, I can't find much to disagree with in his short entry on fascism, which could even be interpreted as warning his acolytes off using it as a term for the Bush administration (almost). In another entry, he concedes that the "media IS liberal." And in the most recent, it's perhaps surprising that he doesn't buy claims that Bush stole the election through voter fraud. In fact, he actually defends the notion.
Another happy development: Chomsky's blog is all but invisible unless you visit Z-Mag or Indymedia (I did when I was locked in ideological battles, but eventually I earned my degree and left). He might sell a lot of books, attract huge crowds and media attention, and influence the thought patterns of the idle famous, but on the internet he's just another bore. In the virtual marketplace of ideas, where his disproportionately influential fans hold less clout, no one's buying.
P.S. -- Speaking of Chomsky and Chomskyites, get a load of the New York Times Magazine's interview with Elfriede Jelinek, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature:
Did you know that Noam Chomsky has a blog? I can't be sure if I knew before this weekend, but if not, hat tip: Ben Kerstein. Apparently he's been doing it on an intermittent basis since June of this year. Simply, that I don't really know if I was familiar with this or not is a good sign.
In fact, I'm actually pleased to have the old leftist himself on the internet, because for one thing it brings his inflated stature down to our level. Chomsky's quickie paperbacks typically comprise interview and lecture transcripts and rarely add up to anything more than capitalistwarmongeringAmerica-bashing. But on the web, Chomsky has to sit down and write a post, one letter after the other, like you or me. And when he does, he gets very boring very fast.
His lectures rarely stay on one topic for more than a few seconds, which can be maddening to rebut -- by the time you have a comment on his interpretation of French withdrawal from Indochina, he's off saying something crazier about U.S. activities in post-war Germany. The blog allows time to response, and commentary is built-in. At first you might think Chomsky would do well in cyberspace, where hypertext would allow him to spin off arguments in different directions by
providing links. But Chomsky never links. And when you think about it that second time, you realize that Chomsky doesn't want you to spend a lot of time comparing his argments against themselves.
This, especially after I spent a few minutes looking through the archives. Dare I say, I can't find much to disagree with in his short entry on fascism, which could even be interpreted as warning his acolytes off using it as a term for the Bush administration (almost). In another entry, he concedes that the "media IS liberal." And in the most recent, it's perhaps surprising that he doesn't buy claims that Bush stole the election through voter fraud. In fact, he actually defends the notion.
Another happy development: Chomsky's blog is all but invisible unless you visit Z-Mag or Indymedia (I did when I was locked in ideological battles, but eventually I earned my degree and left). He might sell a lot of books, attract huge crowds and media attention, and influence the thought patterns of the idle famous, but on the internet he's just another bore. In the virtual marketplace of ideas, where his disproportionately influential fans hold less clout, no one's buying.
P.S. -- Speaking of Chomsky and Chomskyites, get a load of the New York Times Magazine's interview with Elfriede Jelinek, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature:
Why doesn't your husband move to Vienna to be with you?What a lucky guy Mr. Jelinek must be.
Because I need to have a second home in another city. I have to be able to escape from Vienna as often as I like. That's why the home in Munich is almost more important to me than it is to my husband, who is fond of Munich because he grew up there.
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