Thursday, Jun 18th, 2009 ↓

Chomsky turns down summit invite: “I just miss the old gang.”

It’s true — you really can’t go home again.
by staff reporter Dirk Malaprop


“It’s not like the old days,” says Noam Chomsky, the eighty-year-old professor emeritus, from his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “Remember the march on the Pentagon? Back in ‘67. You had Norman Mailer, Dr. Spock, myself, naturally… we were some wild boys, let me tell you. Mothers locked up their daughters when we rolled into DC! Not that it did any good…”

When Chomsky stops chuckling to himself I ask, “So, why aren’t you coming to Pittsburgh for the G20 summit?”

“Where is that invitation? Let me see? This group, the [unintelligible], whoever they are.  They just don’t sound like any fun, do they? I mean, Mailer’s dead, Spock’s dead. Abbie Hoffman? God bless him, he’s probably in Las Vegas or something. People my age are a drag, and I’ve thought about finding a younger crowd. But they just don’t get me, and I don’t get them. Have you ever tried having a conversation with Ali G? He still calls my house at three am asking if I have any weed.”

I try to press the issue, but Chomsky apologizes, saying that he has to rush to a lecture. Before he hangs up the phone, however, he suggests that we check out his recent appearance on Democracy Now!, where he discusses the destructive role that the IMF and G20 play in the economy of the third world.

“And send Pittsburgh my warmest regards!” he says. “You guys are the best. Really. But french fries on the sandwich? I’ll just never get it…”