You, Mason A. Clark, wrote:

> Looseness with facts I thought was a media trait decried by Chomsky.
>  It seems that his pretended followers have adopted the trait as their own.
>
>
>>What state interests did it serve to promote high-end speculations about
>>the Khmer Rouge death toll? Well, one big one was to obscure the
>>*earlier* genocide--namely the one conducted by U.S. warplanes against
>>the Khmer population, which not only killed hundreds of thousands, but
>>which, by destroying the fabric of Khmer society, laid the groundwork for
>>the ultimate takeover by the Khmer Rouge.
As the author of the remarks that Mr. Mason finds so appalling, I can't
improve on Dan Clore's reply elsewhere, except to add:

1) I am not a "follower" of Prof. Chomsky, any more than Chomsky is a
"leader". It's like saying one's a "follower" of Pythagoras. I agree with
most of what Chomsky writes because his evidence is copious and
thoroughly documented and his arguments coherent. I am also not an
anarchist, as Mason seems to think.

2) A TV show about the Gulf War had Chomsky as a participant via a
telephone hookup. Another caller called in to say that he thought that
the professor they had on was a kook; he had never heard such nonsense.
Chomsky replied that the caller was saying something very important,
namely that dissident opinion in this country inevitably sounds off the
wall when it's boiled down to TV-sized soundbites, because the evidence
gets left out; no such burden is placed by contrast on those
regurgitating approved ideas, because the "evidence" (much of it false)
is already assumed by the listeners. I would encourage Mr. Mason to take
a look at the supporting evidence re the U.S. bombing of Cambodia and
anything else he finds questionable. Intellectual integrity demands no
less.

3) I also find much of what passes for discussion on this list
inconsistent (to say the least) with Chomsky's ideas and values.

_________
Tresy Kilbourne, Seattle WA
"The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't
betray it I'd be ashamed of myself." --Noam Chomsky, responding to an
accusation of betrayal by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.