About Noam

Went to see Chomsky at the Orpheum two weeks ago. (As an aside, I love that theatre. I'm such a sucker for ornate artifice, not that I'm shallow, I just like to bask in the opulence of things.)

First, I can't believe that I had to sit through an hour of NDP propaganda before I got to hear Noam speak.

Second, some of the people outside protesting all the many things they were protesting may have been better off if they had actually taken some time to research the things they were protesting. There were a bunch of non-sensical flyers about anti-semitism, in addition to one directed at Chomsky for his supposed involvement with neo-nazi movements. (I'm still think it's funny in a sad way that anyone Jewish could actually be an anti-semite.) I may not know everything there is to know about that, but I do know that one of their major claims was totally false. It's kind of sad when even I know that you're making a very glaringly obvious blunder.

Third, Chomsky is really funny. However, I think that too many of the people there really were there to see Svend, because not very many people laughed at the jokes he told. Of course, I don't think that very many of the people there understood that he was talking about anyway. Not to bore you with details, he talked about the oxymoron that is "fighting terrorism", and about "Star Wars", and about the fact that it is likely that Bush will get re-elected, and then he talked about the likely consequences of his re-election. I am always surprised by how soft-spoken Chomsky is, he definitely breaks the "loud obnoxious" stereotype given to most anarchists.

My only complaint is that it is likely that the speech won't be widely available in transcript format because the stupid NDP are selling tapes of the speech for $30 (as if we didn't already pay to be there?!, dumb wankers).