connecting*the*dots

I’ve found Hitchens to be a smug, smarmy, pseudo-intellectual asshole over the years, but I couldn’t agree with him more about Falwell.

UPDATE: Pre-whackjob Dennis Miller on Jerry Falwell:

Noam Chomsky is the most self-deprecating “intellectual”… ever. When told that he was voted “World’s Top Public Intellectual,” Chomsky probably let out what amounted to an uncomfortable sigh.

You see, Chomsky actively participates in the world through the construct of language, which is highly relational and contextual, not hierarchical. This is why his political views are so unpopular with the American power elite; he’ll play along with their restructuring of nature’s flax matrix of relationships to fit their greedy motivations, while simultaneously challenging their authority by insisting that they must be held accountable to the consequences of their explicit actions within this structure of authority. Crazy notion, eh?

This award is a hierarchical assignment, obviously something Chomsky doesn’t believe in. If his fervent supporters and lobbyists would recognize this perspective and his core point about intellectuals using (completely paraphrasing from “Understanding Power“) “big words to explain concepts in confusing ways just to remain intellectuals,” maybe they’d be better equip to challenge more hierarchical structures in our quickly changing world.

This highly oxymoronic intellectual stratosphere should be reserved for Christopher Hitchens and the ilk.