Noam Chomsky, "Secrets, Lies and Democracy"
I have the honor of having Jello Biafra personally saying �Fuck you� directly to me. He was at a show at Gilman Street to see Les Thugs and I walked up to him, asking for him to do me a favor: �The next time you do an interview,� I said, �could you try and say something different than what�s already on your spoken word albums?�
�Well, you know ... fuck you!� he said, raising his voice on the last two words. I don�t know if I looked taken aback or if he felt bad, for he suddenly started to apologize, saying the problem was that most people asked him the same questions over and over. �I can�t remember the last time somebody asked me about a band or a movie that I liked,� he said.
I mention this because this Chomsky book is taken from an interview with David Barsamian, and Barsamian has the same interviewing problem. The end result is Chomsky provides many answers that I have read in previous books, and two that repeated almost word-for-word as they appeared in the documentary Manufacturing Consent.
Still though, I like these little books from Odonian Press. Chomsky has a problem of being so incredibly dry that his books, while interesting, can be murderously painful to get through. If anybody needed to learn how to tell a few jokes to warm the crowd up, it�s Noam. At one point, the interviewer makes a small joke trying to interject some humor, but Noam doesn�t even notice, instead droning on and on. (And on!)
Also, Chomsky isn�t the best speaker in the world, and it�s easy to notice when you see his words in print. He has a habit of rambling on some small point and never answering the actual question. For example, when a caller asks him if this country has a vested interest in the drug trade, Noam starts off by saying, �It�s complicated; I don�t want to be too brief about it. For one thing, you can�t talk about marijuana and cocaine in the same breath. Marijuana simply doesn�t have the lethal effects of cocaine. You can debate about whether marijuana is good or bad, but out of about sixty million users, I don�t think there�s a known case of overdose. The criminalization of marijuana has motives other than concern about drugs.�
He follows that up with comparisons with harder drugs, makes a quick aside about poverty levels, and then the subject is dropped. So what�s the answer, Noam? Never mind, I�ll answer that for you: yes. By the way, have you seen any good punk shows lately?
I would say this is worth buying it new, but I�m a cheap bastard and nine bucks for a 106-page softbound book (129 with all the footnotes and suggested readings) seems a little steep.
I bought another book today. Jesus, I�m never going to catch up.
