Email of the week

Apologies that I haven't yet returned, as I said I would, to Noam Chomsky's Prospect article this month. It is perplexing that when "the world's top public intellectual responds to accusations of dishonesty" he does it by lying about his own words, never mind other people's. I offer no explanation for this behaviour: as Charles Krauthammer said in another context about another writer far more reputable than Chomsky, "I do foreign policy, not psychiatry" (the joke being that Krauthammer practised psychiatry before becoming a political columnist). But Chomsky's deceit is not the only thing in his article worth commenting on, and I shall come back to it.

In the meantime, a reader, Kevin Summers, writes to summarise the score:

Outch! hey, chomsky just put a rocket up your arse. you're out of your depth, pal. find a tree to die under. k. summers

UPDATE: A reader says that, while Mr Summers's words are not mine, including them does jar in this blog's coverage. That's a fair comment, and I accept the implied criticism. I do get a lot of messages like Mr Summers's, but his comments are not even unintentionally funny, and I ought not to have posted them. I shall leave them up for now, but I undertake not to post further examples of this type of email.

UPDATE II: I have to add that several readers have asked for more contributions from Kevin Summers. We'll see.