Tony Pille interviews Noam Chomsky

Gotta love that Noam!

• TP: How're ya doing Prof? Say, you sell a lot of books, how much dough do you rake in a year anyway?
• NC: I thought we were going to talk about the military-industrial complex and oil interests and their impact on democracy, and how the US power elite is attempting to create a global empire?
• TP: Yeah, hot topics, high profile, big sales if you hit the right niche market! Why just last year I was pushing this completely worthless book about how to reorganize your closet space, and as soon as we got the word "Imperialism" into the title and worked a sharp deal with a college bookstore vendor, sales plain shot through the ceiling! The dopey kids now actually think that if they put their Birkenstocks into one of those hanging plastic shoe sorters they're saving the environment! What saps! Hell, stick a cartoon of Bush as some monkey on anything and whammo! Look at your Manufacturing Consent--bore-ing. That thing's cover needs a picture of some fat guy in tails and top hat--you know, sitting on bags with dollar signs all over them--playing with the strings of some dopey-assed puppet marked John Q. Public or something--Saturn devouring his children is always a nifty eye-catcher with the right crowd, you turn Saturn into Uncle Sam...
• NC: Well, that's hardly what my work is all about, I mean it's much more complicated than that, I don't make those kinds of generalizations...
• TP: Yeah, sure, prof. So why don't you have a good look, a visual brand like Mike Moore has--some hot personal packaging? I know this gal down in the city who can take your nondescript frumpy slouch-in-the-chair college prof shtick--it just doesn't read, Noam-- and punch it up a bit, make it pop with maybe goofy Einstein hair or a crazy hat--one of those Tyrolean deals with a feather in it maybe? Nader's already cornered the intellectual "slept in my suit" look--hell even I can't look at rumpled clothing without thinking of the guy--and Mike has that classic ratty ball cap, dumb eyeglasses and Wal-Mart zipper jacket thing going. Brilliant. Some Chicago agency came up with that. Hell, you should see him when he's dressed up and out on the town--he looks like Gary Cooper! Did you know he actually wears a pudge suit?--the guy's fitter than me, but if any of those geeks caught on, his sales would head straight to the gutter! Nobody loves a loser more than losers!
• NC: You're being ridiculous! This is important work I'm doing and...
• TP: Sure Doc, save it for the NPR talk shows nobody who matters listens to. Hell, I can plot your sales directly up against how many bone-heads sign up for the ritzy big-buck coastal diploma mills--the ones where no matter how lousy you do you've got an edge on everyone else because of the name, the brand. Unless you come up with better gimmicks, you're flat-lining all the way to the sunset. And all those old hippies that buy your books and, duh, "no bag for me, please, I'm trying to save the environment (what jerks)"--they'll all croak in a dozen years with no replacement stooges coming up behind them. Your kids, once they get the sheepskin and start making the six-figures, toss your junk in the same box as the Barbies and Ninja Turtle action figures they ditched when they turned 13. You're a fad. Deal with it.
• NC: Gimmicks? Fad? Why...
• TP: Sure, licensed products, knick knacks, point-of-sale loot to unload at Dead Head T-shirt stands like Chomsky roach clips and "nut"crackers, 'cause after all you are busting the system's nuts...in a pig's eye! You've got a freaking dead-in-the-water product with no possible growth; I couldn't sell you to anyone that doesn't already want you, so you need to get more of the pseudo-intellectual pinhead pocket change--fewer 5 buck indie coffee shop lattes and vegan smoothies in their lives, and a lot more Noam, ya know what I mean? We can play up the Capitalist guilt thing! Tell them you're donating 10% of the take to freakin' Greenpeace and you'll up sales way beyond that, it always works. Invest in a condo in Belize and you can count on getting all that great activist chick tail, even at your age...
• NC: Excuse me, I've had enough and I'm leaving...
• TP: Noam, don't be such a hothead, come back, I can get your yearly gross up 50% no problem! How about a reality TV show where you shack up with Condoleeza Rice and Rush Limbaugh... goddamn loser.