The New Republic

Norman is lucky,

"His days are now spent in solitary scholarly pursuits; his bookshelves buckle under the weight of tomes by Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky."

Had he lived either in Lenin or Mao's paradise so dear to his heart and had he fallen out of favor he would not have had a chance to spend his days in "solitary scholarly pursuits;"

"Solitary scholarly pursuit" that is so bourgoeois.

- jacksondyer

December 12, 2007 at 12:18am

Imagine Norm's weight loss problems if America collectivized its farms.

OK, that was mean, but I really can't feel sympathy for a guy who claimed that Alan Dershowitz enjoyed seeing Lebanese civilians die.

- rozenson

December 12, 2007 at 12:35am

I am moved from my atheism to belief in a kind of literary godhead to this extent: there is, it seems, poetic justice.

- basman

December 12, 2007 at 9:09pm

It's interesting to see how Noam Chomsky dropped him jobless. Chomsky supported countless mediocrities (and rabid anti-Semites) in jobs. But not Finkelstein. Why? Because Chomsky is a coward. Oh yeah, he egged on Finkboy. But not more than that. Support? Come on.

- sleepyavl

December 13, 2007 at 11:38am

Did Chomsky "drop him," Sleepy?

- jacksondyer

December 13, 2007 at 12:20pm

Well, have you seen any support from Chomsky? Chomsky has put all sorts of slaves on academic positions - he is certainly more than adept at placing groupies in faculty positions. Yet he did not lift a finger for Fink. Sure, he barked a bit, but that's nothing.

Fink is no worse, not more stupid, no more of a pathetic and hateful anti-Semitic liar than the average Chomskyite ensconced in a good university position - yet he is in far worse job shape. I personally think this is because Finkelstein is a much more independent person than the usual Chomsky bootlicker.

So these wolves are in a tough game. Makes you think of the Mafia.

- sleepyavl

December 13, 2007 at 9:28pm

Chomsky is/was a brilliant linguist: Transformational Grammar anyone?

- basman

December 13, 2007 at 10:41pm

“Chomsky is/was a brilliant linguist: Transformational Grammar anyone?”

Yes, Itzik, he did produce a grand theory of transformational as well as of generative grammar.

Still his theories are deficient in a number of areas of which I’ll mention only two:

They cannot account for linguistic translation or for multilingualism. They can also not give an account of either correct and or faulty grammatical transformation.  Chomsky here falls back on the notion of the native speaker as standard of correctness. This is ironic since it gives credence to a certain kind of nativism in linguistic theory.

In any case Chomsky  has dealt with his linguistic critics in the same bullying fashion he deals with his political critics.  Like Finkelstein he is a bully, but I don’t believe he is mentally is as is his acolyte.

As far as I know, Sleepy,  Chomsky hasn’t stopped supporting his protégé and has even produced a short video accusing Dershowitz of being a “Stalinist.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

Dershowitz at least supports freedom of speech which is something Chomsky, the utopian, has no use for. Neither does the Leninist/Maoist Finkelstein have any use for free speech.

You can’t get any more Stalinist than Mao, btw.

- jacksondyer

December 14, 2007 at 10:00am

Basman, I strongly recommend reading Chomsky's chief book, called Syntactic Structures. I was shocked by how bad it was and how much bogus math it contains. It pretends to be mathematical, but it is not. As a geneticist, I have quite a bit of mathematical training. It is more than enough to say his math is phoney. Not surprisingly, Chomsky has zero math training.

The other shocking part in his book is that he makes bold assertions for which he provides no proof whatsoever but that he phrases as: "It is obvious that..." "Anyone reasonable would admit that...", etc. Now I can tell you something from day-to-day life as  a scientist: we live by papers published in peer-reviewed journlas. There no reviewer would give a pass to statements such as Chomsky's. You have to either prove your case ab initio, or reference to someone else who already did. In other words, the burden of proof in on you, the one who makes the claim. That is the cornerstone of scientific practice. It is also what Chomsky completely disregards. Not surprisingly, he publishes a lot of these books and non-refereed articles - his grand theories make it only in these non-refereed things. Refereed articles? Not so much.

I urge you, don't take my word for it, Basman. Read Syntactic Structures (all, not just the first ten pages) for yourself.

- sleepyavl

December 14, 2007 at 1:31pm