Ye Olde Staging Point

As with most academic pundits of Chomsky's stature, the trick is to be able to glean the worthwhile stuff from all the blustering rhetoric. I think he reached his peak decades ago with his writings on linguistics and media criticism, and since then his ego has gradually crowded out his common sense.

To give credit where credit is due, I think he has done more than any other living person to give people a vocabulary for discussing the ways in which print and electronic journalism tacitly and often willingly further the agendas of the powerful. Does he still say some pretty stupid things? Don't we all...

Thanks for the comments, Alan!

Since you seem to know what you're talking about, maybe you (or others) can help me with some follow-up questions I had:

1) does Chomsky continue to contribute meaningfully to the field of linguistics/media criticism, or does his major contribution to the field lie firmly in the past? Is he now mostly about politics? (That's all I've ever really read from him, but then again I don't follow the intellectual circles in which he moved/moves.)

2) how does a "typical" liberal respond to Chomsky? The way he's presented in newspapers and the like, he comes off as a sort of respected spokesman. Does the average liberal look at Chomsky with a "oh, it's crazy old Uncle Chomsky, he says the zaniest things sometimes but we give him lip service due to his past contributions," or is what he says taken seriously? Do Democrats cringe or rejoice when they read the latest Chomsky political screed?

3) this isn't so much a question, but me wondering aloud: how do political parties go about divorcing themselves from once-great spokespeople who have gotten out of control and who no longer represent their followers? How does one reject a former spokesman for the party while still trying to pay lip service to his/her past contributions?

The Republican party has over the last decade or so been in the awkward position of saying "farewell" to party "greats" who made important contributions to the party but who remained too tainted by racism to make for acceptable party spokesmen.

Is this the position Chomsky is in? An embarassing relic of the past to whom grudging lip service is paid?

Hey, we'll line Pat Buchanan up against the wall if liberals do the same with Chomsky.

Ooh, can I jump in?

1) IMHO, Chomsky's linguistics is crap and always has been. As more and more parts of it get proved wrong or misguided, he changes his theory to more and more esoteric forms, which are harder and harder to find counterexamples to just because it eventually becomes unclear how to even *state* their claims and predictions in any terms that make any sense if you're not buried deep in the theory.

2) I've read a lot of liberal commentary in the past 4 years and I have never seen anyone bow and scrape to Chomsky, or even quote him as a particular authority, that I can remember. The "typical" liberal doesn't concern himself with Chomsky very much, that I have noticed. I personally have not read any of Chomsky's politics in any details, having become disillusioned with him over his linguistics (which I was once an avid fan of).

3) Chomsky was never a spokesperson for Democrats in particular.

This is not to say I agree with your blanket dismissal of all Chomsky's politics -- I don't know them well enough to agree or disagree. The notion that he's been on "the wrong side of every major conflict" sounds like it implies that all the major conflicts in history have had a completely right and completely wrong side and the right side was the one that won, which seems highly dubious to me. And even for situations where that clearly was the case, well, was Chomsky pro-apartheid in South Africa?

Thanks for the comments, Ed. One or two Chomsky pieces made their way around the Web last year around the time the Iraq war was bubbling into a confrontation; that's where I was first introduced to his politics. They were quite... zealous. I actually wonder if their sensationalist nature caused right-wingers to flip out and assign too much importance to his words.

While I'm on the topic, his essays--along with one or two passed-around-the-Web pieces by John LeCarre--made me aware of a definite distinction between types of political writing. Some kinds are designed to convince the "other party" to come over to your point of view; those essays are the most likely, I think, to be read and taken seriously because they tend to be calmer and more rational in tone. The other type is written basically to inflame an audience who already agrees with you; those have zero chance of changing anybody's mind about the topic at hand. I put what I've seen of Chomsky into the latter category--and I must say it is a category certainly not limited to a particular political leaning.