Maybe I'm more tolerant of Chomsky bashing because I find Chomsky's hair-splitting on issues like Cambodia irritating; justifications in various places aside, his original statements on the issue conveyed a certain blaseness and agnosticism towards what happened in the country. To argue about the "details" of what he said is, especially in the case of a professor of linguistics who understands that meaning is in what is conveyed, a bit besides the point.
And I just don't buy that Alterman spends much time bashing other lefties. Cockburn spends a far larger portion of his column space bashing other progressives, admittedly because they are to his "right", but also because they are not as car-loving, militia-consorting or otherwise as authentic as he is. Hitchens of course loves nothing better than to bash other folks. I can go down the list of columnists with their pet peeves with other progressives.
Why is Chomsky so sacrosanct that bashing him gets Alterman kicked off the progressive island? Yes, Alterman is not a hard leftie, which is why he gets mainstream columns, but he is still more progressive than anyone else out there.
The fact that so much debate is expended on him, rather than on conservatives who oppose the issues we care about is one of the problems of left discourse.
Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org http://www.nathannewman.org http://www.nathannewman.org/log/ (News & Views WebLog) ----- Original Message ----- From: "dave dorkin" <ddorkin1 at yahoo.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 1:46 PM Subject: Re: Alterman
Simple: because one of the main reasons why he IS the most "respectable" and somewhat "left" columnist and Dean Baker or Noam isn't, is BECAUSE he attacks Chomsky et al resulting in instant mainstream credibility that his own modest skills do not warrant. There can surely be disagreements but Alterman spends much of his time deliberately trashing persons who disagree with him and who therefore must be simple-minded leftists unlike such a sophisticated foundation man...
...> Why the urge to attack the most left columnist in
a
> mainstream position to
> get those kinds of positions out?
>
> -- Nathan Newman
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