TMZ catches drunken Noam Chomsky confessing he'd be open to a centre-left democracy
ROCK STAR POL PROF MAKES MAD DASH TOWARD MEDIOCRE MIDDLE
In an age where our cameras are everywhere, even our most admired public intellectuals can't be too careful. But ya done goofed, Noam!
Our paps found the famed linguist, author, and political activist at MIT's campus pub, Technological Inebriation,telling a friend that "given the current state of the political climate, it's entirely possible I wouldn't be opposed to the next president leading a centre-left coalition as an incremental step toward an eventually more leftist future for the country – even though I know that seems to stand in contrast to my past track record of staunch and uncompromising support for anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism."
Uhhhhh, yeah. I'd say it does stand just a bit in contrast, buddy.
HOW WILL THE GRAMMAR GURU RESPOND TO THIS GOTCHA GOVERNMENTAL GAFFE?!
Reps for the star reached out to us early, trying to do damage control.
In the wee hours of the morning, the Manufacturing Consent author's management team at William Morris sent us an email here at the TMZ crib saying that "Professor Chomsky was merely enjoying a private conversation with some friends, and put forth a fanciful thought experiment, as is his wont as one of the century's foremost philosophers. Were he required to live in a centre-left democracy, temporarily, with Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, or even Chuck Schumer leading the party, would that be potentially bearable, and would it be a step in the right or the wrong direction?"
As usual with Noam's actions, the press is blowing it far out of proportion. Because of his prickly relationship with the media, they've tried to sabotage his career as far back as the publication of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in '65. But they'll never take him down, because like his fellow celebrities Zayn or Khloe Kardashian, Noam is strong, Noam is bold, and Noam will always be Noam."
K, whatever you say, I stopped reading halfway through that! All we know is the master of linguistics did a slip of the tongue and it looks like he's gonna pay the price. … or will he?!
WILL THE DON OF DISSENT TAKE A HIT AT THE ACADEMIC BOX OFFICE?!
Probably not too much. The Chomsker is mostly retired from everyday teaching, and whenever he announces a brief return, as he did this past spring to teach an introductory politics course at the University of Arizona, the demand to hear him do his thing is off the charts. This latest comment probably won't change too much for a guy with a long-established reputation, though he might have some explaining to do to his freshman fans!
WHAT'S NOAM SAYIN', KNOW WHAT I'M SAYIN'?!
TMZ was able to catch up with Noam on his morning stroll through the Great Lawn on the MIT campus (it was easy to do, he strolls quite slowly, we totally could have lapped him if we wanted to), and he had a lot to say. Too bad our camera died before he finished even explaining the way he would say what he was about to say, and how he acquired the necessary language with which he would be saying it.
When we interrupted and asked him why he said what he did, he threw this at us: "I must reject the premise of your question; first of all, you're going to need to clarify a few things for me. Do you mean you want to know why I used the specific words I used to express the idea I was trying to express? Do you mean to ask why I chose that particular idea to express? Do you mean some combination of the two?"
Wordy, much? Oh but he wasn't done.
"And if so," he added, "do you mean to ask why I had that opinion, in that moment, or why I chose to deliver it from my brain (as a cognitivistic notion) to the public sphere, opening it up to a dialectical matter for debate? And in the end, was this my choice or were there certain inborn factors (this would be my argument) that made it likely that I would say what I was about to say (to say nothing of the impact of my extremely rare intake of alcohol on my faculties, which could lead to a sentence that appeared to have meaning, but actually had none [see: 'colorless green ideas sleep furiously')? Moreover…"
IS HE STILL TALKING??
Yeah when we published this he was still talking!!!
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