On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 10:48 PM, Nicholas Roberts < nicholas at themediasociety.org> wrote:
> Chomsky talks about intentional being boring, being against persuasion and
> rhetoric and for rational thought and analysis ... and presumably pretty
> keen to dissuade the cult of personality around him... of course this makes
> him even more of a messiah (no, he is not the messiah, he is just a very
> naughty boy, now .. eff off)
>
> 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...
>
>
>