Noam Chomsky: "Let's take an unimportant issue, namely the one that has dominated the news for the last year: the silly scandals in Washington. Now, they're an absolute obsession with elites. Educated elites across the spectrum habe been completely obsessed with it. Journals, television, everything. The public was not interested; they wanted them to stop it a year ago. In fact, the split between public opinion and elite obsession became so extreme that it even aroused some commentary, which is unusual. But that was extremely clear. The elite could not get enough of the soft porn, and the public didn't care. If they wanted soft porn they could find it somewhere else. And they wanted Congress and the executive to get on to some serious business. I mean, who cares if some guy had an affair?"