Sorry, but this apology would have more credibility if it was issued before you were publicly exposed as being in so closely in league with the notorious rapist, pedophile and human trafficker. It should be noted that Epstein was convicted before old man Chomosky chose to run defense for him.
I like the part where Epstein helped Noam do his taxes and the Chomskys are just like well we are actually victims here
What I find most damning in the correspondence isn’t Chomsky’s defense of Epstein—he seems to have genuinely believed in his innocence—so much as Chomsky’s subscribing to the framework that the #metoo movement/“cancel culture” and associated wave of sexual assault allegations was a baseless collective “hysteria”. Valeria’s statement implies that this was a stance Chomsky arrived at independently of Epstein.
Chomsky was born in 1928. This doesn’t justify him being a sexist piece of shit, but it certainly can explain him being a sexist piece of shit.
He was well into this forties when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was made law which essentially stopped discrimination against women for getting checking accounts and lines of credit, which were hard to come by at many banks prior to that.
Until 1976, nearly every state had a “marital exemption” for rape, at this point Chomsky was pushing 50. It wasn’t until 1993 that marital rape was codified into federal law as being a crime nationwide, at this point Chomsky was in his sixties.
He was 17 when World War II ended in 1945.
Chomsky is a massive piece of shit for this, but I mean, are we really that shocked that a motherfucker from the beginning of the Silent Generation, literally on the edge of being from the Greatest Generation, is a sexist pig who thinks women are the devil? In two years he’ll be a 100 god damned years old.
Not excusable, but I mean, I’m just… not shocked, honestly.
Chomsky’s attitude seems representative of a lot of men and women (most of whom were younger than him) who had always described themselves as feminists, but who had similar feelings that #metoo was unfounded hysteria.
Epstein was capitalizing on that and promoting it, not just with Chomsky but with a lot of other academics outside of his usual circle.
It seems like a fair number of men hid their abusive tendencies behind a thin veneer of feminism. I’m looking at you, Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman.
A LOT of Boomers and silent generation people are really protective of rapists and child molesters and the systemic rape culture that enables it. Just look at how they circled the wagons around woody Allen for example it’s pretty disgusting
“Im sorry i got caught.”
I never got the Chomsky hype. Why do/did people like him?
IIRC, he helped invent XML.
So like… why do people like him?
Thanks, me too. Even though I never thought he’d be pedophile material, I always thought he was bad vibes. I feel vindicated somewhat. He is a creep, I wasn’t just imagining it.
He had some interesting ideas about language development in the 70s which have mostly been debunked since (by people who actually knew what they were talking about).
Noam Chomspky has always been a blowhard.
I studied linguistics in the 90s, and that was the general attitude about Chomsky then (specifically universal grammar and to some extent X-bar theory—his work on generative syntax and formal grammar from the 50s was still considered foundational).
But I’ve lately discovered the research of the Minimalist program that he was working on for the last few decades, and that seems pretty solid and groundbreaking even now.
Whatever, fuck him.
I’ve never liked Chomsky. But it’s bullshit that he’s getting more bad press than the dudes who raped little girls.
I mean it’s a pretty bad look to go to bat for dudes who raped little girls and to call public outcry about it hysteria. Poe-tae-toe Poh-tah-toe.
Where did he meet his new young wife?
I mean I understand the desire to make this kind of connection because she is 30 years younger than him, but my goodness, that’s kind of ignoring her respectable career University of São Paulo. Let’s not minimize her accomplishments and education or reduce her to merely a call-girl procured by Epstein.
I remember Chomsky getting visibly upset and telling an interviewer that talking about his first wife is upsetting and that they won’t be talking about her. It seemed like he was just sad. And it was painful.
I have complicated feelings about that moving me so much now that I know how much Chomsky can rationalize interacting with Epstein.
