Chomsky News Network

[Gordon Fitch]

Michael McIntyre:
> Two points about Chomsky and one about the medium.
> 
> (1) What does one of Chomsky's elementary principles - that you concern yourself first with the crimes of your country - mean, if not that citizenship is of fundamental importance?
> 
> (2) How many times have any of us heard Chomsky argue that Bennett and his putrid ilk HAVE to lie because people (Amurrican people) wouldn't stand for their crimes if they knew the truth?
> 
> (3) Bourdieu argued, rightly I think, that television only works for "fast thinkers" who do nothing more that cast a banal intellectual gloss over the affair as they instantiate the accepted verities?  I didn't see the Chomsky/Bennett exchange, but I did tune in around 8:20 when I thought it would be occurring.  Look at the mawkish sentimentality that preceded the exchange.  How can you successfully follow that with a message that requires people to rethink fundamental assumptions about their world, in a way that is bound to be disturbing.
> 
> Bennett, on the other hand, had only to do what he always does.  Everything that came and preceded his performance provided the frame within which he so easily fits.
> 
> Jesus this is depressing....when I think of how few people I can convine to love the resistances of textuality - how DO you break through this crap?

I don't think anyone is going to accomplish much with
television.  Generally, people's political understanding
has to come out of their experiences.  Watching television is
not generally speaking much of an experience.  It seems to
produce a trancelike, druggy state of mind most conducive to
relaxed entertainments like sports and variety shows.

-- Gordon