"[M]ark the repressed sense of inferiority: there is hardly an answer offered by Chomsky that isn't interpolated by a snarky quip from the interviewer. The readers cannot be trusted to reach the correct conclusions on their own, and so are offered a sample of the conversation and an interpretive twist. The very first gesture in the piece is to offer a subtly twisted fragment of dialogue. In the use of journalistic 'colour', the careful interruption of key points with snarky post-facto rejoinders, the anfractuous linguistic circuits used to imply what can't be said, Brocke's piece exhibits the elaborate and excessive detail of a very bad liar."- from Lenin's Tomb
It's as if every word of his is so radioactive, so infectious, it has to be handled with double sets of tongs, by gauntleted hands, under special black lights, and everyone within earshot is furnished with a helmet and suit, and stationed behind a glass barrier, observing the subject in a series of mirrors, to prevent contamination.
ReplyDeleteYes. The Guardian interviewer even mentions her fear of contamination, while dismissing that fear as ridiculous in the very same breath:
ReplyDelete"Such is the effect of an hour spent with Chomsky that, writing this, I wonder: is it wrong to mention the fig rolls when there is undocumented suffering going on in El Salvador?"
- thus having her fig rolls and eating them, and then puking them up as a party-piece.
As somebody said in Lenin's comments box: "...the Guardian (of what?)".