Tom Wolfe’s new book tackles Noam Chomsky

Great. Another book I have to order…

The gloss given by Wolfe of Chomsky’s activism is also somewhat less than laudatory. He stops just short of accusing Chomsky of “radical chic”-ness, Wolfe’s noted neologism for those celebrities who embrace social causes in order to appear righteous and relevant. According to Wolfe, Chomsky felt “pressure” to be one of the “brave intellectuals” (emphasis his) who protested the Vietnam War. An intellectual, Wolfe writes, was a “figure who gave off whiffs — at least that much, whiffs — of Left-aware politics and alienation of some sort.” That was Chomsky. And, what’s more, he knew how to “exploit” the Vietnam War in order to increase his status and promote his ideas.

Chomsky’s prominence as an activist and his accomplishments as a linguist thereby combined to make him a bespectacled avatar for braininess. “Even in academia it no longer mattered whether one agreed with Chomsky’s scholarly or political opinions or not,” Wolfe writes, “for fame enveloped him like a golden armature.”