Anyway, I admire that you've turned off the tube. In a similar vein, I have thought lately that I spend too much time online. It has the potential for more intellectual stimulation, of course, but it remains that there's a whole world to be actually lived.

But you're mistaken about Ariel Sharon being the driving force around settlement building during Oslo. Sharon never held a position as a minister in a Labor government during Oslo, he was housing minister during Yitzahk Shamir's tenure. I would also add that the settler movement was nurtured by one Yitzhak Rabin in the early seventies, and that during Rabin's tenure as Prime Minister, his housing secretary was Benjamin Ben Eliezer, a labor hawk. During the nineties, both Likud and Labor slowed the physical construction of settlements with the goal of increasing the population in existing settlements.

In a sense you're correct, it is true that Likud was in power in Israel from 1996 to 1999, under Netanyahu, but the growth of settlements remained constant in the nineties.

sycophantic Charlie Rose

Maybe a little bit. But so much better than the cable talking heads. The point is, there is time to make your point on his show. He actually lets his guests talk.

He was on Charlie Rose, at least twice that I know of -- once with Rose himself, who was pretty respectful and had him on for quite a long time, and once when Brian Lehrer was the guest host and asked one moronic question after the next that Chomsky had little patience for indulging.

It's true that that show affords a decent opportunity for a real conversation, but I doubt the number of people who watch is very high.

Fwiw, I was going to suggest him, too, not because I don't agree with WT that he's often sycophantic, but because I do agree with lateagain that at least there's enough time to state your case. Not true many other places.

That brings up another question... why hasn't Charlie Rose had Glenn on his show? He likes to think he's on the cutting edge... no? Certainly Glenn should qualify. If anything, his work is more like the "bleeding" edge.

It's true that that show affords a decent opportunity for a real conversation, but I doubt the number of people who watch is very high.

...but there may be a higher percentage of influencers among them.

I've been thinking about the chilling effect that accompanies the stifling of ideas counter to conventional wisdom. In a way, this is the same complaint of the right during the nineties, and I remember feeling a thread of sympathy for conservatives who were frustrated that they couldn't, for example, make an intellectual argument against affirmative action without being labeled racist. Same for feminism, environmentalism, etc. Reasonable people can disagree, of course; the problem is that those countering the "correct" (read: politically correct) views often provide unwitting cover for the actual racists, sexists, and anti-Semitic. So, if there really were anti-Semites lurking on salon, this is the piece they'd jump all over and agree with. It's a price well worth paying, in my view, as I value independent thinking above almost all else.

I suppose that's why a good scientific foundation is so important, as well as training in logic and critical analysis. That way, lurkers hiding in the shadows of real debate can so easily be exposed.

Unless we had real talk shows, of the kind Monty Python used to mock the BBC for

We used to. Moyers, and to a lesser extent Brancacchio,(the new GOP improved PBS cut Now down to a half hour). Amy Goodman still does it. Her deconstruction and demolition of Lou Dobbs was superb. Charlie Rose tries and occasionally 60 Minutes nails one. They balked on the Siegelman story. Tom Snyder was the last guy to do it, and by that time they had him on late at night. I'm sure you know the names that did this as well as I. Garroway, Jack Paar, even Murrow had a TV show for a time. Believe it or not, Steve Allen. He was the Daily Show of the era. We might watch these shows today and think they were tame but this was the late 50's and early 60's. For the time, it was far better than what we have today.

I don't know about how vital the TV cesspool is, or how where it's at it is -- except of course that it's everywhere, like Muzak used to be.

I tend to riff off McLuhan, i.e. if the medium is the message, and the medium is TV, which is cool, then to turn it hot -- which is the nature of Chomsky's message -- one would have to take over the entire medium and transform it into something else. Maybe some flavor of IPTV, like YouTube can do this, but we sure as hell can't, at least not by simple intention.

Killed today in the parking lot of Sapir College in Sderot, Israel, by one of the barrage of Qassam rockets launched from Gaza today.

Chomsky really is exceptional, but there are other thinkers and writers who are just as excluded from the mainstream media. Try getting Howard Zinn on the History Channel, for instance.

I think one reason is that talk tv definitely became partisan in the nineties, and this worsened in the 00's. I can't sometimes can't believe how normal it is for me to see tag lines like "democratic strategist" or whatever nonsense. Who the hell are these people? Certainly, if they had any credentials, they would be more important than the fact that they are strategists.

Another reason is that folks like Chomsky just don't have the kind of television skills that are necessary for today's televsion. I think everyone agreed at a certain point that news-tv would be about entertainment at a certain point, and so being able to present yourself and your idea in pleasing ways became more important than having an idea.

As for Chomsky's choice. The dude is a recluse, and is definitely not a fan of mainstream culture from what I've seen. He even panned Manufacturing Consent,the doc, for sensationalizing him. I imagine he's repulsed by the entire circus.