Ed Herman
---------------------------------------- Message: don't have interviews with the NYT. The questions were mostly pointless and inappropriate for an interview, but the interviewer was a nice and perfectly serious person, and after a lot of discussion -- went on for about an hour and a half -- seemed to get the point. The fact checker then called and went over a few "quotes" they were going to use, which I corrected, and she got the corrections straight -- but I see they left at least some of them uncorrected. The "quotes" are phrases extracted from long answers to the questions, mostly explaining (politely) why they are the wrong questions so I cannot answer them, and we should be talking about something different (sometimes discussed).
It's interesting to compare this with interviews in journals everywhere in the world, as far as I know, outside of the US mainstream; even in very poor countries, even dictatorships. Radio and TV too, everywhere. It is simply inconceivable that questions like these would be asked in an interview. Rather, questions about serious issues. There are plenty of forms of craziness, but this pathology is, to my knowledge, specific to US liberal intellectual elite culture. Even the photo tells you something about the newspaper trade here. The photographer, also a nice person, asked for a few shots without my glasses after 1/2 hour of very elaborate photography (came all the way to Gainesville for it, where I was giving talks). I said OK, but it's not me. That's the one they used. Why not just put a photo of some other person? What matters is not truth, but making it look a certain a way -- in this case, a childish and silly way. Trivial, but symbolic. It's a remarkable divide between US elites and the rest of the world.
I suppose by US standards it's not bad.
--Noam Chomsky
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