I find this sort of demand for performance -- of anger and grief, which I believe are supposed to equal sympathy and solidarity, a sort of Two Minutes' Hate -- very odd. Some people are now tiring of these performances, and others are growing angry because they want more performance. I've run into this elsewhere on the Net. In this case, Chomsky is being faulted not entirely because his failure to perform adequately shows moral deficiency, but also because it doesn't sell well with the voters, which is a surprising criticism given that this has never been Chomsky's stock in trade.
Maybe people who feel an urgent need for further rituals could be more specific about what it is they desire, so that others could have the opportunity of enacting them correctly. But I am not hopeful. We are supposed to _just_know_.
It is true that Chomsky's analyses of 9/11 are somewhat simple-minded, but it is evidently almost impossible to be simple-minded enough for a people raised on television where history does not exist and every problem can be solved by an exercise of righteous violence in the last five minutes of the program. I think those with a concern for his reaching out to the voting public contradict themselves if they fault his simple-mindedness.
-- Gordon