double bill

By anders pearson 20 Nov 2003

today i got to go to a Noam Chomsky lecture. i’ve seen him talk <a href=”http://thraxil.org/nodes/202”>before</a>, and it’s always a thought provoking experience.

today’s lecture was called “After the War” and was some first-rate Bush-bashing. he talked some about the current administration’s policy of “anticipatory self-defense”, which is identical to the policy of imperial japan that brought us that day in 1941 that will live in infamy.

while Chomsky’s ideas and his books are first-rate, he’s not known for being a terribly dynamic, exciting speaker. fortunately, while his prepared talk was a little flat, he livens up considerably during a question/answer period. when he gets excited or annoyed at a question, he actually gets passionate and really starts to put some energy into it. today he even <em>swore</em>.

one of the better questions that was asked was, after he’d talked about how the government has managed to completely ignore the largest anti-war protests ever in the history of the world, how could activists hope to actually achieve anything in a fight against the money and media. Chomsky’s reply was to point out that 1) a bunch of people taking the afternoon off from work every once in a while to march is a pretty lame excuse for activism and 2) activists in much worse situations have managed to pull off much greater successes with fewer resources. his example was the recent brazillian election of Luiz Inacio da Silva, despite strong opposition from the brazillian and american media and governments. they managed to organize in a country where if you speak out against the government, the police will, in Chomsky’s words, “beat the shit out of you”.

he had plenty more to say too. you can probably get the gist of it by reading his <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805074007/“>new book</a>.

almost immediately after the Chomsky lecture, i met up with jP and a couple of his friends to go be in the studio audience for a taping of <a href=”http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/thedailyshowwithjonstewart/“>the Daily Show</a>. it was an interesting transition. the only other TV show i’ve seen filmed was a crazy gameshow in China. it was relatively low-budget compared to the Daily Show and i had a pretty tough time just figuring out what was going on most of the time.

the daily show was pretty impressive to watch live. they were really efficient. no retakes, no elaborate setups. it took less time to film than it takes to air.

Tags: noam chomsky daily show jon stewart hegemony or survival