Monday, October 10, 2005
I have been sent a review copy of Noam Chomsky's new "book," Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World. Believe it. I suppose the publisher figures any publicity is good publicity, as it wouldn't take long on this blog to figure out I'd probably not be all that favorably impressed.
I call it a "book" because it's really an extended interview that spans only 200 pages and is printed in such a way that...well, remember when you had to write a five page paper for school, but you only had enough material for three and a half pages, so you cranked the line spacing on the typewriter up to 2.5 instead of 2 to stretch it? Yeah, it's like that.
I was going to play "fisk the random paragraph" by opening the book at random and discussing what's wrong or deceptive with the response I found there, but it would be too time-consuming to type in all the text. A flip through the book results in such reactions as, "Uchh," "Ugggh," and "people actually think like this?"
The trouble with Chomsky is that his twisted, selective narration of history and skewed analyses are so brazen and obvious in the subjects with one is familiar, that when one encounters Chomsky touching on something with which the reader is NOT familiar, you feel the need to run out and find out if what he's describing is true. You can't trust a word.
Anyway, it's a nice little trade-paperback. It appears to be well-printed, and I am grateful for receiving a copy (seriously). Maybe I'll read it some time. It appears mercifully short, although I have a ton and a half of unread books filled with good analysis and history and even nice stories all screaming for my time and attention.
Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World -- a new must-have for Chomsky fanbois everywhere.
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