St. Noam is under attack!

I've discovered another excellent anti-Chomsky weblog: Chomsky Watch.

The site occasionally links to St. Noam's weblog (hosted by Z magazine, a publication for people who find The Nation too moderate). Aside from the asinine political views on display, what astonishes me is the simple fact that Noam Chomsky, world-renowned intulleckshul and master linguist, is such a horrendous writer:

Not reported but quite important is the dispatch to Israel of 100 F16-I's, advanced jet bombers, with the very specific announcement that they can reach Iran and return, are updated versions of the F-16s that Israel used to attack the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 (thereby setting off Iraq's nuclear weapons program, though that part of the story, though pretty well confirmed, is avoided), and are equipped with "special weapons" (according to the Israeli Hebrew press).

Torturing prose in that manner should be a war crime. Then again, Johann Hari has uncovered an admission that Chomsky doesn't even write his own blog, so he may have a defence:

I guess we will never know what Chomsky really thinks because - as he did before when I challenged him on one of his statements made at a New Statesman lunch - he simply denies having ever mentioned the opinion polls.

Mr Bombastic, a regular poster on the Medialens chatboard, e-mailed my questions to Chomsky. He summarises the Professor's reply: "[He] says that he has nothing to do with the website Hari refers to. He also says that friends in England send him some of Hari's articles, and he's noticed unsourced material there that Hari probably lifted from the aforementioned website, 'since it's highly unlikely that he (Hari) could have discovered it on his own.'" Ah, innuendo - presumably about plagiarism - one of Chomsky's preferred techniques. I challenge him to provide a single sliver of evidence for this extremely serious accusation, or to retract it and apologise.

This denial is bizarre. Last time Chomsky denied something I attributed to him, it was Chomsky's word against mine and there was no way to resolve this argument. This time, however, there's some fairly conclusive evidence. Look at http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/. It describes itself as "the official weblog of Professor Noam Chomsky", and it is attached to Z Magazine, for which Chomsky has regularly written for over a decade. It claims Chomsky makes direct blog entries. Yet Chomsky claims he has "nothing to with with it". Are we really meant to believe this? If it is true, why does he carry on writing for a magazine that publishes a false blog in his name?

Is St. Noam getting flunkies to blog for him, or is he simply denying his own statements when they prove inconvenient? Both are believable.

Posted by damian at August 23, 2004 07:14 AM