Letters to the Editor
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Please STOP w/ the Chomsky links!
They're a black hole for me, that I can't resist.
" 'ow would you like it if I called YOU bilingual?"
- Ali G. interviewing "Norman Chomsky"
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We've already seen Chomsky's perfect president
Pol Pot. My passport is current, thank god.
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What's The Big Idea?
Jeff Greenfield, an elite broadcast network gatekeeper, is correct about the need for concision when participating in the daily news flow.
And it's fun to learn how to write to 30 seconds, or 60 seconds, or 500 words, which is the limit for a column in a medium market newspaper. It's about 750 in the Times if you can get in.
I can write to those limits in my sleep, but it can get boring; and it is limiting, if you do it every day and find after time you want more. That's the point of it.
In some newsrooms where I worked, I chafed, sometimes openly, about the limits. In every case, a boss I reported to basically said, "This is it; get in or get out."
You're writing to the clock or to the space - the "news hole," which is ruthlessly tied to ad minutes or ad spaces.
Clearly though, Noam Chomsky is very skilled at concision, as shown in the video clip. When I went to school in Boston, I attended some of his lectures (and he he appears around Boston in other venues).
He's a linguist and can be very dense in his speech; but he can be concise also.
The fact that Greenfield thinks Chomsky is a wacko, or whatever, says that Chomsky does not, or will not, confine himself to the binary parameters of everyday America political debate.
So yes, some MSM honchos simply might not like what Chomsky has to say.
In that binary framework, poor 'ol Noam is just "beyond the pale."
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One man's terrorist is another man's hero
After Guantanamo, 'Reintegration' for Saudis
By Josh White and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 10, 2007; Page A01
For five years, Jumah al-Dossari sat in a tiny cell at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, watched day and night by military captors who considered him one of the most dangerous terrorist suspects on the planet.
In July, he was suddenly released to his native Saudi Arabia, which held a very different view. Dossari was immediately reunited with his family and treated like a VIP. He was given a monthly stipend and a job, housed and fed, even promised help in finding a wife. Today, he is a free man living on the Persian Gulf coast.
The treatment is part of a Saudi "reintegration program" designed to help Dossari, 34, and other former Guantanamo prisoners adjust to modern society and learn the meanings of Islam. About 40 of the more than 100 Guantanamo detainees from Saudi Arabia who have been transferred to Riyadh since last year have been released after participating in the program, and the rest are scheduled to be let go in coming months.
Defense attorneys, human rights advocates and former Guantanamo detainees say, however, that the Saudi program works because most of the men held at Guantanamo were not a threat in the first place.
Under an unpublicized agreement between Riyadh and the Bush administration, the Saudis are preparing to repatriate half of the approximately 20 of their citizens who remain at Guantanamo. They have promised that all will participate in the reintegration program, Saudi and U.S. officials said.
That will leave about 10 Saudis in Guantanamo, who are scheduled to be tried by military commissions, according to U.S. officials. A total of 138 Saudis have been held there.
Ramzi Kassem, a clinical instructor at Yale University's law school who represents two Saudis released to their home country, said the program is a "face-saving" measure adopted for the United States.
"Even the United States has acknowledged that the rhetoric of these men being the worst-of-the-worst is a great exaggeration," Kassem said. "I don't really think the Saudis genuinely believe these men are the sort of hardened men they need to worry about. That's really all fiction."
http://tinyurl.com/2oo2g9
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RMP
PBS either on Bill Moyer's Journal or the News Hour would be the best way for Chomsky to avoid concision.
He's been on The Charlie Rose Show a couple of times -- once with Brian Lehrer guest hosting (who asked moronic questions) and once with Charlie Rose, who did a little bit better but was pretty respectful. Both of them are on You Tube if you're interested.
And yes, Bamage - I only recently saw that Ali G. interview with Chomsky and it was quite funny (though the best Ali G. interview ever is the one he conducted with a truly furious Andy Rooney).
I don't think Chomsky is ever concise -- his answers usually go far longer than even hosts whose format allows for longer answers (such as Rose) can endure. He's only really concise when he becomes angry, as he was in these two truly enjoyable segments of interviews conducted by a mewling, neoconservative-citing television host in Canada -
http://youtube.com/watch?v=10rTPSSmOFw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bieFwutoqvA&feature=related
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@Paul D.
Your neglecting to consider the possibilty that I agree with the Republicans on the side issues that I listed, in which case I'd be doing the Progressives a huge favor by considering them unimportant. I'm one of those people who has to create my own path but the one thing that's clear is that the behavior the current administration has engaged in should be abhorent to ALL Americans and the degree to which it isn't is the degree to which the media has managed to control the message and prevent people from realizing the extent of the crime.
-- Paul Dirks
There are many Americans that have different priorities than you or I do. It is just a reality of political life. It's like herding cats. The difficult part is cobbling together a movement or party of people willing to agree on a set of logically prioritized policies and values and act as a bloc to achieve political power and effect change is. This person isn't going to get what he wants either:
I think the "spineless" critique of the Democrats is too charitable. Sadly, most Democrats in Congress are corrupt, racist, homophobic, war mongers.
Racist, Homophobic, Warmongers? Well, maybe warmongers, but racist and homophobic?
That's a real comment from another ideologically fixated Jacobin. He's all cheesed off because Dems caved on the federal hate crimes legislation. He doesn't care a damn about anything else. Fortunately, the political universe does not revolve around him or you or me. It doesn't revolve around any single one of us and any pet issue we might have obsessed over for months and magnified out of all proportion in our own minds isn't greater than the sum of all the issues, except to the individual who thinks it is. It's like the oxymoron that is the libertarians battle cry: "Individualists, unite!"
If you limit yourself to such a small set of issues that are important to you, (one), you will always be in a minority.
It's one thing for pundits like Glenn to focus narrowly on certain issues. Voters might be wise to avoid such a narrow focus. As to the matter of priorities, I try to consider the number of people affected by a policy, good or bad, and the magnitude of the impact of the political issue, negative or positive, from my perspective, but as objectively and dispassionately as I am able. So while I might agree with him about the need for federal hate crime legislation, I don't agree with him about it's urgency to be the top priority superceding all others. I might think your single issue is more urgent, but I wouldn't submerge all others issues before it. In terms of negative impact, the economic crisis, regardless of which side you are on, is the one that will have the greatest negative impact. And globally, not just in America.