At 11:39 AM 5/30/02 -0500, Michael McIntyre wrote:
>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?
to be fair, he did accomplish a little of this. i was typing fast and left it out. plus, i'm on 30 hours. i had a brainstorm and couldn't stop until the creative juices were spent. my ass be draggin' right now.
anyhoo, he did say this, that the US people wouldn't stand for this crap if they knew. and then he told Bennet that he should be ashamed of himself for not talking about america's wrongs too.
the problem with that from the perspective of the medium he's working with is that the finger pointing is at bennetbard and, of course, the people watching him. he says all these things that make people feel good about themselves. and then chomsky turns around and says: you scum. the viewer is going to feel the sting of the insult also hurled at them.
this is especially true when people all of a sudden find out that they didn't know things. "How could a smart person like me no know?" they ask. "How can i have been so stupid?"
And then they get angry. That anger can take the form of resistance: "i don't want to hear this" or it can take the form or projection: "all those losers out there. they don't know the truth. behold, i do and all the people i associate with do. how can THOSE people be so dumb".
or, it can be constructive. but that kind of constructive response is not going to be engendered by this medium.
>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?
were you sprung from the head of zeus? how'd it work for you? did it take a day? a month? a year? many years? is it still going on?
kelley