The Gilmore Girls meet Noam Chomsky

Here's a serious sign of the changing zeitgeist in a note from a friend: "Noam Chomsky was mentioned yesterday in an episode of Gilmore Girls (a WB mainstay). It was so funny too, where an ambitious teenager dismisses a moral teenager by saying, "If you have a problem with it, talk to Noam Chomsky."

And here, perhaps, another:

"ABC, The View, Special Guest star host: Janeane Garofalo, Friday, December 6th.

"Today the ladies were joined by their first celebrity co-host, Janeane Garofalo! During Hot Topics Janeane recommended two books to our viewers called Terrorism and War by Howard Zinn and Blowback by Chalmers Johnson."

To check it out click here

And here's a college student interviewing Chomsky for an alternative paper located in the wonderfully named "Normal, Illinois." You don't have to pay too much attention to the questions, but some of the answers show why the Gilmore Girls might do worse than take a few of their problems to Chomsky. Tom

Noam Chomsky Analyzes the Bushies

By Anthony DiMaggio
The Indy
December 6, 2002

DiMaggio: In your opinion, how much of the war on Iraq has to do with securing Iraqi oil reserves and how much has to do with diverting American's attention from the Bush Administration's war on the American people? Is one more of a factor than the other?

Chomsky: It's quite widely assumed, right within the mainstream, that these are the two primary reasons. I agree. Regaining control over Iraq's oil resources (not access, but control; a very different matter) is longstanding. 9/11 provided a pretext for the resort to force, not only by the US: also Russia, China, Indonesia, Israel, many others. And the need to divert the attention of the population from what is being done to them accounts for the timing. [It] worked brilliantly in the congressional elections, and by the next presidential elections, it'll be necessary to have a victory and on to the next campaign.

Anthony DiMaggio is a junior at Illinois State University and a writer for the Indy, an alternative weekly publication in Normal, Illinois.

To read the full interview click here