Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Hilariously Horrifying

An anti-Chomsky fest is on at FrontPage, David Horowitz's blog gives us this alternately uproarious and chilling example of Chomsky's infantile mendacity:
As John Williamson, a contributor to the Anti-Chomsky Reader shows, Chomsky even lies about his own statements. In an email to Williamson Chomsky claimed that a statement of his quoted in a New Yorker profile by reporter Larissa MacFarquhar was "too ridiculous to merit comment...No one can seriously use this as a source...childish diatribes in journals attempting to discredit political enemies... almost all gossip...a ridiculous gossip column in the New Yorker." According to the New Yorker profile, Chomsky had made the comment to an MIT class that McFarquhar attended. Not ready to believe that anyone could be so brazen in lying about what he himself had said, Williamson contacted McFarquhar to check. She who told him that MIT had video-taped the class she had attended where Chomsky made the statement. Williamson obtained the tape and sure enough everything Chomsky had said -- every word -- was on the tape.
If you're interested, I posted on the New Yorker article here. Honestly, one doesn't know whether to laugh at the titanic asininity of the man; or weep over the fact that so many in the Western intellectual elite take him seriously.