Noam Chomsky, �Powers & Prospects�
It�s 5:30 in the morning.
I am on a campus that I don�t go to, helping with a paper I don�t work for, for a bunch of people I don�t know, and with the exception of my incredibly hot girlfriend, don�t care about.
I have argued with a 14-year-old writer for three hours over one stinking word. His point: that Mel Gibson has a penchant for directing violent films. I want him to insert the word �recent,� as The Man Without a Face was not particularly violent or gory. It�s called accuracy, dammit.
I don�t know why I care. My name is not on this piece. I don�t care if people are able to cast aside his whole article because he got loose and lazy with the facts. But I�m annoyed that he keeps trying to get me to capitulate on the issue. It�s like a child (and at 14 years, I can call this little fucktard a child) who keeps asking for candy until the weary parent give in. I do not give in to whiny little brats.
Mr. Sleepy, if he is reading this, is most definitely laughing his fat ass off at this point. He�s been with me at this very same newspaper office, at these same times, sweating over bad prose by primadonna writers who don�t think the freak with the mohawk could possibly have a valid point.
And you walk a tight line because you need these writers, even the bad ones, because you�re stuck in the fucking office at 5:30 in the morning trying to fill a page. You need these people. You need their stories. You only wish they could be good.
So I�m explaining patiently why his story needs fixing. Not changing and not a total rewrite, but some light tweaking and basis in fact. He nods his head and goes away.
Ten minutes later, he�s back. He still doesn�t want to say �recent.�
�Mad Max was violent and gory,� he says.
�Your sentence says �director Mel Gibson,� implying the films he directed,� I answer. �Mad Max was directed by George Miller. Gibson directed, in order, Man Without a Face, Braveheart, and The Passion of the Christ. We�ve been over this.�
�Yeah but I don�t think it�s needed. I�m making a generalization��
My hot girlfriend comes to help � she�s heard about my baseball bat swinging editor in chief days.
�Don�t,� she says. �You are not allowed to generalize. And while we�re at it, your sentence says, �Driven by director Mel Gibson�s fetish for sadistic brutality�� Do you know what fetish means? You�re saying that Mel Gibson can�t orgasm unless he is sadistically brutalizing someone. Did he tell you this? Because if he didn�t, he could sue us for libel.�
See why my girlfriend is so hot? And that�s without mentioning the short skirt she�s wearing.
So he leaves again. For five minutes this time. He grabs other staffers who are trying to finish their own stories and pages. Five people tell him to put the word in. Finally, one girl says he may not need it, and suddenly her word is proof-positive that the rest of us are wrong. We�ve spent three hours on the same point.
What the fuck am I doing here? I have books to read!
But not this one by Chomsky. Not anymore, anyway. Thank Christ for small favors.
