Noam Chomskey

[chequita guevara]

What is great about Chomsky's political work is that when you open up his books, they are about 1/3rd source notes. His best political work is on the media. His political analysis of the world is a little one-sided, by which I do not mean he is biased, but rather his work is rather one-dimensional, lacks depth. It's easy to understand, therefore, but it lacks an understanding of the nuances of actual real world politics.

It's a good enough place to start. Just don't remain there.

[loinburger]

Huzzah for the Chomsky Heirarchy.

[Berzerker]

Actually I like him. He's a leftist, but we need people who inform us about what government has been doing. Too often, the "mainstream" media just ignores world events and US involvement, then we wonder why foreigners come here to kill us. Now, just about everyone has an axe to grind, so the question becomes whether or not personal biases lead to intentional distortions of events, and I see little evidence that Chomsky is dishonest inspite of his critics and politics. That's why I like Christopher Hitchens, another straight shooter from the left...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Actually I like him. He's a leftist, but we need people who inform us about what government has been doing. Too often, the "mainstream" media just ignores world events and US involvement, then we wonder why foreigners come here to kill us. Now, just about everyone has an axe to grind, so the question becomes whether or not personal biases lead to intentional distortions of events, and I see little evidence that Chomsky is dishonest inspite of his critics and politics. That's why I like Christopher Hitchens, another straight shooter from the left...

I think I'm going to shoot myself.

[Berzerker]

Why? He's usually anti-government, so he can't be all bad.
It's not like he's demanding that government force Augusta to allow women in as members or something.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Chomsky's work on media can be strident, one-note, and border on conspiracy theory. But his central thesis is, for my money, dead on. Among the points he makes: that the media is fundamentally conservative, because (1) it is a business first -- increasingly a big business -- and one whose first obligation is to other businesses (i.e., advertisiers), not the public -- which makes it incapapble of opposing big business or free-market capitalism in any consistent way; (2) the cost of news-gathering has made the media more and more reliant on "sources" (like government officials) to provide them with news, and thus made them increasingly unwilling to alienate their sources by criticizing them; (3) the structure of journalistic careers is such that the biggest plums -- the White House press corps, for example -- go to people who are good at getting "access" to what they are covering -- which means, again, people who are actually liked by the organizations they are suppoised to be "objectively" covering; that "official Washington" is really a small town, where politicians and the journalists who are supposed to be scrutinizing them live next door to each other, go to the same dinner parties, send their kids to the same schools, date, marry, etc., creating bonds of loyalty between politicians and journalist that override the pretense of objectivity.

As I said, Chomsky can go way over he top on these matters. But for a reasoned, well-documented, well-argued introduction to these ideas, check out Manufacturing Consent, co-authored by Chomsky and Edward Herman. The first chapter should give you a provocative introduction to what he's all about.

[Q Classic]

i liked him better when he talked about linguistics.

he's like a lot of well-regarded professors. both john mearsheimer and bruce cumings are charismatic and wonderful to listen to.

as to whether they're right or not...

[Alexander's Horse]

*Ming is surprisingly enlightened on Chomsky ..... I wonder what he has against Robert Fisk*

[*End Is Forever*]

It's easy to understand, therefore, but it lacks an understanding of the nuances of actual real world politics.

Ah, so that's why all the socialists here love him...

[Mercator]

I only know him as a linguist.
He's rather influential in that field, but I largely disagree with him. I haven't actually read any of his work though.

[Plan Austral]

I have a relative who is an english teacher, when Chomsky came to Argentina she went to see him thinking it was going to be a conference about linguistic (sp?), but it was him ranting about politics.