Press Action ::: Chomsky Wins 'Sharpest Commentator' Competition

Friday, September 12, 2003

Chomsky Wins 'Sharpest Commentator' Competition

Noam Chomsky is on the mainstream U.S. media’s do-not-call list for failing to respect the established political order. Television producers are afraid to go near him. Their careers in big money television would be jeopardized if they put him in the political talking head rotation. Corporate bosses at the networks and their sponsors would be livid with a producer audacious enough to give air time to someone who offers ideas so foreign to the Washington political culture.

Chomsky gets more air time on television in other countries than he does in his home country. Here in the United States, his speeches and interviews occasionally get an airing on C-Span. And, on the rarest of occasions, he’ll be invited to appear on a commercial television news broadcast. But his appearances on commercial television must be handled with extreme delicacy. Take, for example, Chomsky’s May 2002 appearance on Paula Zahn’s morning show on CNN. He couldn’t appear alone. Instead, Chomsky was forced to “debate” William Bennett, the former drug czar and gambling addict, on whether the United States is a leading terrorist state. I cannot remember another recent appearance by Chomsky on network television.

Despite this virtual blackout on television, Chomsky is still a best-selling author, highly respected commentator and sought-after speaker. And in a recent Press Action poll, Chomsky was the overwhelming winner of the “Sharpest Commentator” competition, gaining a whopping 31% of the votes (61). In second place was the “Other” category where Press Action readers nominated about 20 different commentators, including Rush Limbaugh and Greg Palast.

Among the other commentators on the ballot, Michael Moore came in second with 27 votes, or 13% of the ballots cast. Gore Vidal and Arundhati Roy were next with 20 votes, or 10% of the total. Llewellyn Rockwell, Lewis Lapham, Alexander Cockburn and Susan Sontag rounded out the bottom half of the vote total.

In a recent essay on CounterPunch, author Norman Finkelstein provided an explanation of the role that Chomsky has assumed in the U.S. political culture over the past 20 years, which might help to explain why he is persona non grata in the mainstream press:

“A rite of passage for apostates peculiar to U.S. political culture is bashing Noam Chomsky. It’s the political equivalent of a bar mitzvah, a ritual signaling that one has “grown up"--i.e., grown out of one’s “childish” past. It’s hard to pick up an article or book by ex-radicals--Gitlin’s Letters to a Young Activist, Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism--that doesn’t include a hysterical attack on him. Behind this venom there’s also a transparent psychological factor at play. Chomsky mirrors their idealistic past as well as sordid present, an obstinate reminder that they once had principles but no longer do, that they sold out but he didn’t. Hating to be reminded, they keep trying to shatter the glass. He’s the demon from the past that, after recantation, no amount of incantation can exorcise.”

-- Mark Hand

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