You’ll Never Guess Which Writer Really Has It In For Noam Chomsky

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We should start off this Tales From The Slack by saying that famed professor, activist, linguist, and “public intellectual” Noam Chomsky is NOT, as it turns out, dead.

Nope, the author of Manufacturing Consent,  Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, Syntactic Structures, and other total rippers is at present fully in possession of his mortal coil. He is 95 years old, however, and we all know how common it is for old coils to go bad.

How much news of Noam’s aliveness arrives to the relief or chagrin of any Autopian staffer is presumably a mystery to even the most loyal of readers, but Jason makes it easy to see his heart his squarely placed on his sleeve with a tender “Aw man” expressed for the Chomster, as you can see below.

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As for Matt, well, he was clearly less busted up by the news (which again, proved to be false, as we only just discovered in a meeting moments before I tapped out the words you’re reading now).

In the moment, Jason was quick to note our latest Tales installment had presented itself:

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Mercedes, sweet Summer child that she is in this case, was blissfully unaware of who Noam was (is), but thankfully Matt was able to sum him up for her with impressive conciseness. Seriously, Wikipedia, no one needs all this.  Matt’s 23 words below are all it takes, really.

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Indeed, who among us has the time to research Lefty Figures? Or Righty ones? I have enough time for one hour of Fox, one hour of MSNBC, and that’s it. So I got, let’s see … Hannity and Maddow. Look, I’m busy.

Now, had Mercedes been a Gilmore Girls fan like Matt, she may have at least recognized Noam’s gnomish mug:

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(A quick aside: I would say Rage Against The Machine minus Noam would have been even more no-fun, as no band has ever been less fun or more pointless than RATM. If I had a nickel for every person who said Rage really turned them around on “the issues,” I would have zero nickels. Now, had the band set their messages to butt-rock stylings or country songs, that I would respect.

Anyway, I had to make one of my dumb jokes:

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I am ride or die though. That part’s not a joke.

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And here’s more of my nonsense, to Jason this time. I pitch a lot of ideas to Jason as “I think it would be fun if you did this,” and he’s taken me up on like two of them, which both did horribly, so he’s doing the right thing by ignoring me. Which is fine; all I’m really after is an “LOL” from literally anyone in The Slack, because I’m that needy.

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Ah, THERE it is. Thank you Matt, that Hahaha sustained me for another day.

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55 thoughts on “You’ll Never Guess Which Writer Really Has It In For Noam Chomsky”

  4. While on the RATM subject, I love when someone randomly spouts on social media, “I liked RATM before they got political.” Uh, what exactly did you think they were trying to tell you when singing “some of those who run forces, are the same who burn crosses.”

      1. That would be an appropriate thing to rage against occasionally.

        I could go on for ages about songs people like and either completely confuse the meaning or have never actually considered the lyrics. Some of my favorites people don’t understand are “Born in the USA” by Springsteen, “Pink Houses” by Mellencamp, and “Fortunate Son” by CCR.

        1. True, but those are really a present-day problem.

          The list of “people who fail to understand art” is a long and undignified one.

        2. My fav is “Every Breath You Take” that sooooo many people my age used as a first dance at their wedding. Uh yeah, a song about an obsessed stalker is perfect for professing your love and devotion!

          “Pumped Up Kicks” is another one. Uh, folks, it ain’t about the shoes!

        3. I’ve seen American Woman played in some pretty inappropriate circumstances, but Pull Up To The Bumper at a bar mitzvah probably took some sort of cake.

  6. no band has ever been less fun than RATM

    How wrong can someone be?
    Pick up a bass guitar, pick any RATM song and noodle away.
    Instant fun. Plus sounding good at a musical instrument has never been so simple.

    If you can ignore the Che Guevara aesthetic and focus on the instrumentation and music they are pretty damn rad.

  7. I come here for car news and hot takes about said cars.
    Now we have to deal with the shit you just dropped and read all these asinine comments it will bring.

    So I’ll do it. I’ll be the first one.
    The Gilmore Girls was a terrible show and not even Chomsky could redeem it. I can’t understand why it is so well regarded when it objectively sucks hot donkey balls.

    (For anyone that can’t tell, yes this is supposed to be sarcasm and a joke. Except for the bit about The Gilmore Girls, which is actually hot, buttered garbage).

  8. I was surprised yall didn’t mention the time he punched Gore Vidal, but that’s probably because (after a quick Google) that was Norman Mailer. Meh, who can keep up with all these old philosophers?

    1. The only book by any of these irrelevant old dust bags I ever read was ‘Carrying the Fire’ by Mailer, because it’s ostensibly about Apollo 11. That was…..something.

        1. Yes that’s great. I’ve read a lot of the ‘nosecone’ autobiographies as well, including those of the three Apollo 11 astronauts. If you really want to get nerdy, I thoroughly recommend ‘Digital Apollo’.

  9. To be quite honest, I do enjoy the sounds of Rage Against the Machine. Verily so when I feel the urge to contact objects with my clenched fists, or, conversely, when I want to feel the urge to contact objects with my clenched fists.

  10. > no band has ever been less fun or more pointless than RATM

    Y’all are coming out swinging this week – the Cybertruck is cool, Chomsky is overrated, and RATM was pointless are certainly some takes one could have.

  11. It seems pretty obvious that once Chomsky passes on, it will look like this:

    25% – OH NO!!!!
    25% – Well, darn, that’s too bad
    25% – Meh
    25% – Thank fucking God!!!

        1. One time in response to one of those “who would you invite to a dinner party” surveys I came up with Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, and William F Buckley. Maybe William Burroughs just for fun.
          I don’t think they would get past the Hors d’oeuvres so that would be a savings right there.
          Yeah I’m old.

  12. I’ve thought of drawing a cartoon of this dude, calling it Gnome Chompsky, and having this creepy gnome with Noam’s wrinkly visage but modified with pitbull-like jaws. He’d be standing still, with blood dribbling down his chin and neck, and the legs/shoes of some unfortunate soul hanging out of of his mouth.

    2. Nim Chimpsky was an actual subject in a long running and wildly mishandled study on linguistics.
      Classic psycholinguist humor. Not as good as Gnome Chimpsky.
      Don’t think he ever ate anyone though.

      Sadly he has in fact passed.

  13. That Brandon Bird painting, “Signifier and Signified”, is great.

    Also, many Rage fans being insufferable in all kinds of ways doesn’t mean every one of those albums isn’t cover to cover bangers.

  14. Yeah Hardigree is dead on here. Chomsky might have had some good ideas occasionally but they were far outweighed by a series of horrendous takes on all sorts of issues.

    He and Ben Carson are poster children for the idea that just because you’re really good at something doesn’t mean you’re good at other things.

        1. Yes, you were. Too early in the morning. I thought that was more of a “dead to me” than what you actually meant. Reading is hard sometimes.

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