Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 06:28:56 -0700 From: Brad DeLong Subject: Re:lbo-talk-digest V1 #6332
>You don't think it's really weird that on the one hand Chomsky wrote
>Thion--the publisher--saying that he should follow his own judgment
>in deciding how to publish the "Chomsky Preface", and that on the
>other hand Chomsky's defenders work very hard to say that the
>"Chomsky Preface" was included in Faurisson's book without Chomsky's
permission?
yahhh .... I live in Camden, mate, I can get ten weirder things than that delivered to my door with a pizza. It's no weirder than the idea that Larry Summers used to be in the habit of signing his name to memos without reading them, and substantially less weird than the idea that "improving tax collection" is a serious policy suggesting to get Argentina out of its present mess, both of which I've been asked to believe and haven't made a fuss about.
It seems pretty obvious that Chomsky has a big mouth which gets him into trouble, and that he is bad enough at spin control that he talks himself into corners while trying to pretend that his mistakes weren't mistakes. Whether this is a venial or mortal sin is for God to decide; all that the present exchange is proving is that you've got your mates and Chomsky's got his. Personally, I've never read him, because anyone with that many uncritical devotees has to be a loony in my book. But for Chrissake, does anyone honestly think that either the Chomsky-supporters or the Chomsky-detractors are like teetering on the brink here, and are just a few more email messages from slapping themselves on the forehead and saying "how could I have been so blind"?
grrr, spleen, bile ...
Wojtek wrote:
>Is not the "struggle for Palestinian liberation" (which includes, inter
>alia, blowing up school buses) overwhelmingly supported by the members of
>this list?
Which leaves me repeating my overused epithet of "Give over", after having considered and rejected a few stronger ones.
This kind of rhetoric was fucking stupid when it was brought out in the Northern Ireland debate and it's fucking stupid in this context too. Anyone who ever tries to pin support for terrorist bombings on another human being had better do so with *very* good proof, and even then it is more constructive and more intellectually honest not to do so. Even Martin McGuiness, who almost certainly drove a car and quite probably did much more, would have been ill-treated by someone who refused to address his political point and just shouted "murderer" at him.
The analogy with Northern Ireland is exact; it is not possible to have an opinion on the Palestinian question at all without, one way or another, lining yourself up on the same side as people who commit utterly unacceptable acts. To treat a serious discussion of a difficult situation as if it were a competition to come up with the most florid descriptions of massacres and broken bodies, is to make political capital out of other people's grief. Give over.
dd
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