Thank you for sharing this very interesting story. --Raghu. On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 3:36 PM, Michael Meeropol <[email protected]> wrote:
> My Chomsky story is quite old but worth re-telling. > > In 1974, my brother and I had just emerged from privacy to declare > ourselves sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. WE were suing Louis Nizer, > whose book, The Implosion Conspiracy, was a best seller. Nizer had used > parts of our parents' prison correspondence without permission -- we owned > the copyright to the published edition that he had quoted. In his defense > of our lawsuit he claimed "Fair Use" --- using parts of copyrighted > material as part of an historic exercise. Our response was to seek out > historians (or well known students of history and the use of language) to > argue that Nizer was making "unfair use" of the letters and that his book > was not a serious work of history at all. I had the idea to approach Noam > Chomsky (who I had never met) based on his reputation as a serious > intellectual and his work as revealed in American Power and the New > Mandarins. > > I called him at home out of the blue and asked him if he would be willing > to read THE IMPLOSION CONSPIRACY and give us the benefit of his thoughts as > to whether it was a serious work of history or not. He said, well, "I'm > flying to Washington tomorrow, I guess I can read it on the plane." (This > is a 500 page book and the flight from Boston was probably no more than 2 > hours at the most -- now it's an hour and a half.). > > Well, he read, it, thought about it -- and within days we had received a > notarized affidavit with a detailed analysis of why the book was not a > serious work of history (his cover letter said -- "What a load of garbage. > Hope this helps.")---The affidavit included a detailed analysis about how > Nizer (an experienced trial lawyer) used different linguistic devices to > privilege the testimony of the prosecution witnesses and denigrate the > testimony of the defense witnesses in his narrative description of the > trial. > > Our lawyers were blown away and determined on the spot to have him as a > witness at the trial of the lawsuit. Unfortunately, for a variety of > reasons we settled out of court --- I still wish we'd had a trial! > > But that's neither here nor there. My point is that Noam is incredibly > generous with his time. Annie and I have gotten to know him and Carol > over the years and have visited off and on --- He says that he often stays > up very late catching up on e-mails, even from high school students who > want to know about "his philosophy" for a paper (!!). > > Reading the negative comments on the Chronicle Website make me very sad > --- the very people who should be reading his stuff are steered away by > right wing talking points about him being a self-hating Jew (ridiculously > disgusting and totally wrong) and/or holocaust denier (the Faurisson issue > --- all that proves is that he's a first Amendment fundamentalist -- and > totally opposed to any government criminalizing belief -- no matter how > bizarre and disgusting) or someone who has nothing good to say about the US > (wrong -- it's the US government he criticizes). > > (sorry to vent --- I didn't get to the Chronicle website before they shut > down the comments). > > Thanks to whoever posted it. I don't read the Chronicle regularly and > probably would have missed it. (You can bet Noam would never have > mentioned it.) > > > By the way --- Noam once had an interesting experience with the Harvard > Economics department. > > He had been brought in by Juliet Schor to talk about the responsibility of > intellectuals and at the end of his talk, he brought up a subject (I'm sure > it was tongue in cheek) that he was wondering about. He noted that > virtually the entire economics profession takes the David Ricardo view of > comparative advantage and blows it up into the argument that free trade is > the route to prosperity. He says that his reading of history is that > there is not one example of any country who followed great Britain into > "development" that followed the free trade model. From the American 19th > century to the Japanese industrialization, these governments all interfered > more or less with free trade. He ended by saying, I'm sure there's > something wrong with this analysis but that's the way I see the actual > historical experience. The way he reports it is all the economists there > said his point was very interesting but no one took him up on the obvious > invitation to correct the historical record as he had outlined it. > > He once had a talk with Paul Samuelson in which he said Samuelson's famous > spectrum of economies from total free enterprise (laissez faire) to total > state control (Stalinist central planning) in his textbook was misleading > because in both the US and the Soviet Union, large institutions control the > population -- IN the SU it was the central planners, in the US it was giant > corporations --- Only an anarchist-libertarian society was capable of truly > freeing people from centralized control. > > (My guess is Samuelson acted like he didn't understand!) > > Could go on but you can get the picture -- a mind totally alive and active > and learning and sharing all the time! > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > >
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