the larger the audience and the greater the opportunity for rhetoric, the more lifeless he becomes... anyone see him at the Riverside Church last year? the Church of Chomsky was packed and there where all sorts of embarrassing tributes to him .. and he was flat, and frankly, pretty boring
much like his books often read like a phone book, more like a reference book than a diatribe.. he is into information
its his one-to-one conversations, or the small groups that shine...
although he is getting increasingly dire and pessimistic (along with the country and the world)... Hopey Changey time in the New Middle East aside
regarding MIT, his Generative Grammer work was one of the foundational works for computer science and especially the natural language processing that Google and the NSA now run the world with... he is quite candid in stating for many years his own department was funded exclusively by the Pentagon
you've got to wonder about his inbox, chomsky at mit.edu - 20 hours a week doing emails - thats a lot of correspondance...
his analysis of US foreign policy must be terribly useful for war planners too, he is often giving insights or making connections or giving historical patterns that I am sure the dullards and doctrinaires in the Ivy's and corporate think tanks must envy
I bet every neo-con has a secret secure book-shelf where they keep the complete works of Noam Chomsky, and the secretly read it along with their tax haven bank accounts and skull and bones regailia...