I liked Chomsky's linguistics too, and I liked one of his political books - The Manufacture of Consent, which describes how newspaper editors will tend to employ people who are like them, and so certain ideas are passed down from one generation of journalists to another, and not changed. Any dissent will tend to come from the outside, not the inside. I'm not sure I agree with him, as some newspapers will hire journaists they disagree with just to spice up the news organization, but it's an interesting book.
Hitchens was good during the first Gulf War. He had a brilliant exchange on CNN with Charlton Heston who for some reason had been wheeled out by the Republicans to defend the war. Hitchens said, well if you're going to bomb a country, the least you can do is know where it is. So, he asked Heston, where is Iraq? And then asked him to name all the countries Iraq shares a border with, and of course Heston couldn't do it, and sat there stuttering and going all red-faced with fury, waiting for the camera to be taken off him, but CNN kept filming and Hitchens kept saying: "well, okay, if you can't name them all, name three . . .er, two? . . .one??"
Sarah
At 10:30 PM -0800 02/15/2003, kakki wrote:
Yes, he is and I actually agree totally with his linguistic theories!I am sorry to hear about Hitchens being a self-confessed, confessed or professed homophobe. I did not know that. Just when I was enjoying my small crush on him. Damn.
