Ten dollars, two hours, and one hastily drawn neighborhood map. The money was for admission and the two hours was the time to sit, wait, and watch and listen. The poorly executed piece of cartography was my guide home should Noam Chomsky (Noam fuckin’ Chomsky!) so thoroughly discombobulate my psyche I loose any fundamental sense of direction and become unable to find my way home after the lecture. I guess I had high hopes but this was supposed to be like going to see the Michael Jordan of intellectuals.
Someone different showed up. It wasn’t quiet Birmingham Barons Michael, but Noam Chomsky (Noam fuckin’ Chomsky!) just pretty much shot free throws for an hour and a half.
I guess it’s not really his fault. Perhaps I expected too much from the aging giant of American intellectualism. Regardless, I still expected more than what equated to some dude reiterating the litany of complaints against Israel and subsequently declaring each one a different variation of the word irrefutable. The argument had the intellectual appeal of listening to some freshman talk about how Ian’s is the best pizza ever “cuz it just is man.”
Maybe the problem was that everyone in the room already agreed that Ian’s kicks ass and just wanted a cheerleader to remind them all how great it truly was. I doubt many people went there to hear Noam Chomsky (Noam fuckin’ Chomsky!) critique the policy or tactics of their movement and I am fairly sure there were few in the audience who needed to be (or would have been) convinced by his lecture. Still, I was excited to glimpse the man who was supposed to be a pillar of enlightened discourse. But in the end, I wasn’t inspired, swayed, incensed, or even offended. I was hungry.
It seems that Noam has found himself in the endzone of intellectualism and is (at least for that Tuesday night in Madison) content to celebrate by dancing around with some pom-poms. That certainly isn’t how Michael Jordan did things, and if we’ve learned anything from a certain wide receiver, it’s that if you’re not careful, that type of behavior could land you in Buffalo.
