chomsky vs buckley

[josef k.]

Chomsky's tenacity and focus under extreme provocation is impressive.

 

[craner]

Fox Facts!

Fox news is phenomenal.

There was a report once from a French strike, where the Fox correspondant turned to to camera and whispered, "a lot of these people are Communists!"

Fox fact.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

That obsequious slug Hitchens actually manages to make Mos def look good there...

that's my problem with Hitchens, even when I agree with him (which isn't that often) I'm repulsed by how much of an odious jerk he is...did anyone see that video of him being waterboarded? here we go...I love that they're playing some kind of adult contemporary coffeeshap jam the background & I rather doubt real interrogators are as gentle & courteous...still I guess fair play to him for doing it & changing his views on waterboarding...

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also I hate to say it but Mos Def embarassed himself there quite badly. and it's not as if rappers can't be articulate, I've seen KRS-One hold his own against Sean Hannity (speaking of nutty Fox News)...

 

[josef k.]

I just watched the KRS-One, Hannity video.

I want to live in a world in which Hannity isn't on television...

EDIT: Except perhaps in the kind of scene which Padraig posts above.

 

[craner]

Holding your own against Hannity is surely not that difficult.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Holding your own against Hannity is surely not that difficult.

intellectually, no, but it was on Hannity's own show on Fox - not usually the fairest of forums to ppl who disagree with Hannity - & I thought KRS still came off pretty well...

also on the topic of articulate rappers I think the "intelligent but gangsta" guys (to speak) frequently come off much better than the Mos Def/Kweli overtly "conscious" types...I'm thinking of Bun B, Scarface, Killer Mike, etc...

 

[josef k.]

It is hard to win on Fox News - the hosts monopolize the mics and shout-down their guests. Two people who did very well were Charles Grodin:



Total control.

And also Phil Donahue:



"You can't intimidate me Billy. I'm not Jeremy Glick."

 

[scottdisco]

Mos Def, Rushdie, and Hitchens were quite pally (eventually), i thought, it was quite cool. the last two men could have been rather more robust on the Maher show than they were with the rapper, so fair play, i read it as fostering lines of communication; who knows if, in the future, we won't see more of the same?

the Three Stooges.

re Hitchens and the water-boarding article he did, i take my hat off to him.

there was quite an amusing piece on LENIN'S TOMB about it, if i remember, in which amongst Seymour's insults was the elephant in the room that Hitchens had agreed to undergo this (in a friendly, controlled environment, yes) for the sake of it, which, frankly, says a lot.

Padraig, you say he changed his mind?
i happily admit to being in complete ignorance of any Hitchens views on water-boarding prior to that article.

 

[nochexxx]

great thread!

there was a time when i was addicted to watching o'reilly's rants. i just love the super ridiculousness of it

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

re Hitchens and the water-boarding article he did, i take my hat off to him.

there was quite an amusing piece on LENIN'S TOMB about it, if i remember, in which amongst Seymour's insults was the elephant in the room that Hitchens had agreed to undergo this (in a friendly, controlled environment, yes) for the sake of it, which, frankly, says a lot.

Padraig, you say he changed his mind?

yeah he wrote an article for Slate suggesting that water-boarding isn't actually torture (which I've never actually read & rather irritatingly can't find), which is what kicked the whole thing off - the editor of Vanity Fair then challenged him to undergo it himself...certainly he's not the only commentator to make that claim, unsurprisingly Limbaugh has done so much more overtly & callously...

& I dunno about "hat off", some credit certainly - tho whatever else you can accuse of him I don't think you can call Hitchens a coward (also as per that recent incident with defacing the SSNP poster) & after all he's what, almost 60? on the other hand it really does come off like a rather grotesque carnival stunt & moreover, & more importantly, I think "is waterboarding torture?" is the wrong question...addressing a specific tactic rather than an overall attitude/doctrine...

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

there was a time when i was addicted to watching o'reilly's rants. i just love the super ridiculousness of it

back when I was working construction in the East Bay my boss was (in addition to being a speed freak) a hippie/desert raver type gone right wing nut & he'd blast Limbaugh & Hannity & Michael Savage every day, all day...well that or the most shite banging psytrance you could possibly imagine...me & him & a crew of Latin dudes listening to these jerks lay into illegal immigration all day, thankfully none of the Mexican guys knew enough English to pick up all the hate speech...anyway I eventually got to this strange point where right-wing talk radio became like a mantra of relaxation for me, I would just totally zone out & listen to the flow of speech & not even hear any individual words...good times...I guess...

 

[scottdisco]

& I dunno about "hat off", some credit certainly - tho whatever else you can accuse of him I don't think you can call Hitchens a coward (also as per that recent incident with defacing the SSNP poster) & after all he's what, almost 60? on the other hand it really does come off like a rather grotesque carnival stunt & moreover, & more importantly, I think "is waterboarding torture?" is the wrong question...addressing a specific tactic rather than an overall attitude/doctrine...

hat off, some credit certainly, same thing really, just semantics eh

Hitchens wrote

At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence.

for this Slate piece

torture's torture, eh.

the overall attitude/doctrine, you are quite right, is (or should be) the main issue, and i am sure the guy must be aware of the wider implications of his actions; tbf, a clear eye of his on the water-boarding thing can be read as emblematic of his take on that wider attitude/doctrine, and at least - if you will - his constant media appearances denouncing such practices and discussing this VF piece are helping act as a sort of mea culpa for earlier ethical illiteracy.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I think you're stretching it out a bit there man, as far as reading into a more general critique.

really, it's like this - it's mixed really - OK so here he is willing to put his $ where his mouth is (literally) & then say "look, I made a mistake, this is in fact wrong". I think both of those things are quite laudable. on the other hand, if you're such a jackass that you have to actually be waterboarded to understand that it's torture then I have a hard time commending you for it.

also I will admit that I simply find Hitchens to be quite repulsive, much moreso than even the Limbaughs & Hannitys, who are at least up front about it. hell for that matter I prefer Paul Wolfowitz to Hitchens. really what is more pathetic than an ex-Trotyskist neocon who can't even bring himself to admit he's a neocon? also he is the epitomy of a person who actually damages every cause he argues for by making both himself & it seem vastly unappealing...as an atheist watching him bloviate on atheism always makes me cringe...

 

[scottdisco]

i admire your honesty

you might conclude that Hitchens represents many of the most destructive currents in that 68er radical tradition: the illiberal contempt for ordinary politics and incremental reform, the intellectual absolutism, the attraction to power (once to the international working-class movement, now to the US) and even to violence.

here

Craner had quite a cool piece on Wolfowitz once on one of his blogs.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

nice one - I think this hits the nail on the head as well...

He clearly aspires to be the modern Orwell, but will he leave a coherent body of thought? And in the end, should we take him seriously?

no & for the most part, no. George Orwell went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Christopher Hitchens volunteered to be waterboarded. Which is fine (there's not always a clearcut anti-fascist cause to go fight for after all...) but I suspect that Hitchens probably equates the latter with the former...

it's quite true that he reps the worst of both ends of the Boomers...

 

[scottdisco]

the Cyprus book is one of his few titles i would be bothered to pick up.

some of his columns at Slate are good, i must say, and some excellent.

Goodhart nails him on the absolutism.

 

[droid]

Edward Stourton presents a series celebrating great debates, combining archive of rare discussions between key figures with analysis by a panel of experts.

The panel discusses the 1969 debate between left-wing philosopher Noam Chomsky and conservative commentator William F Buckley about United States foreign policy and how it justifies its objective of spreading 'freedom' around the world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00js7tl

...

 

[swears]

Yeah, I listened to this on the bus to work this morning. Not very enlightening, you'd get more from just watching the whole thing on youtube. One of the historians on it said that Chomsky just writes the same book over and over again and you know what he's going to say before you even pick it up... even though I agree with a lot of what he says I'd be inclined to say she was otm.

 

[droid]

Yeah, I listened to this on the bus to work this morning. Not very enlightening, you'd get more from just watching the whole thing on youtube. One of the historians on it said that Chomsky just writes the same book over and over again and you know what he's going to say before you even pick it up... even though I agree with a lot of what he says I'd be inclined to say she was otm.

Nah, its nonsense, a fatuous shallow criticism. Manufacturing consent is nothing like Deterring Democracy, Deterring Democracy is nothing like Fateful Triangle, Fateful Triangle is nothing like At war with Asia etc...

I thought it was interesting that Buckley apparently agreed that he had lost the debate.

 

[swears]

I think Chomsky is on the side of the angels, here but he is very predictable and often overstates his case.

Yeah, Buckley did admit that Vietnam might have been a "tactical error" in thr end, lol.