On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:42:50 -0500 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
> Michael Pugliese wrote:
>
> > And what about
> >this statement from Noam?
> >http://arutzsheva.org/article.php3?id=4680
>
> That's embedded in a rant by a Zionist, which contains this
> abominable line: "Chomsky, then, sees nothing wrong with denying
> that
> the worst crime in human history ever occurred."
>
> Noam isn't above criticism. If I were asked, my problems with him
> would include: excessive hostility to Marx, his line that the Cold
> War was mostly about imperialist rivalry rather than being about
> real
> issues of property relations, his tendency to overestimate
> Washington's role in world evil, his anti-theoretical bias, his
> excessive faith in empiricism, and his inability to admit he was
> ever
> wrong. But, that aside, I still admire him tremendously. He's a
> national treasure. And I find your repeated attacks on him to be
> pointlessly sectarian. People who go out of their way to hammer
> Chomsky are mostly scum. Since I like you, Michael, and don't think
> you're at all scum, it bothers me more that you do it than a shit
> like Alterman. So why the obsession? No one's perfect. Give it up,
> man.
You don't understand but Michael is auditioning to be LBO-Talk's official State Department socialist, not that there is much call for that sort of thing now a days. I suppose that Hitchens was in the days immediately after 9-11 the closest contemporary example but he has since drifted well to the right and has completely renounced his former socialist sympathies. There was a market for this sort of thing back in the cold war days when Washington felt it necessary to be able to present a 'progressive' veneer while competing with the Soviets. Since the end of the cold war, Washington hasn't felt much need to do this anymore. So I guess Michael will be stuck hanging around here. Sorry no fancy gigs in academia or in the think tanks for him.
>
> Doug
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>