By Kat Stoeffel 6/26/12 9:15am

Fanboys

Health Care Advocates Hold March Into Capitol Hill Office Building

Patch Adams is Real, Really Supports Julian Assange

Patch Adams, MD, the clown doctor portrayed by Robin Williams in the eponymous 1998 film, has joined several dozen prominent figures of the American Left in asking Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa to grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum.

“The ‘crime’ that he has committed is that of practicing journalism,” states the letter, delivered to the Embassy of Ecuador in London yesterday by American advocacy group Just Foreign Policy.  Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 9/27/11 7:52pm

Beating the Street

ows

Overnight at Occupy Wall Street

BY MONDAY NIGHT, the 10th day of the Occupy Wall Street protest, the miniature colony at Liberty Park Plaza was rather sophisticated. The “media tent,” which on Saturday had consisted of a MacBook and an umbrella, now looked like an amateur version of the CNN newsroom. Protesters crushed around a central table, tweeting, emailing and editing video, surrounded by a barricade of tables holding more computers, with the cracks in between filled in by sleeping bags, blankets and backpacks. One revolutionary with a hard face sat straight-backed, a cigarette poking sideways out of his mouth while he typed away. The computers and lights were powered by a generator, which briefly died when someone misplaced the gas can. The media center, as the always-lit hub of information and electricity, is the cornerstone of the encampment. Entry is restricted. Read More

By Staff 2/07/07 6:03pm

I Apologize Re Chomsky

Noam Chomsky’s assistant comments below that there is an illness in the linguist’s family and that’s why he had to run, to make a plane back to Boston. Also I note that Chomsky gave good weight at an earlier event at Columbia the same day. I’m feeling bad about the meanspiritedness of my Read More

By Staff 2/07/07 10:34am

Backtracking on Criticism of Chomsky

I think I was too harsh on Noam Chomsky yesterday. Oh well, I said it. Anyway, here’s Peter Voskamp, editor of the Block Island Times, offering a better picture of the great man:

I saw him a few years ago in Austin and he was up there for what
seemed like hours– a Read More

By Staff 2/06/07 9:44am

A Sour Chomsky Shows Disrespect to a Young, Paying Audience

Last night Noam Chomsky was to give a lecture at the Miller Theater at Columbia University in N.Y. The Miller Theater was sold out 2 weeks back for the event, $5 a head. Probably 500 people. The outside walls of the theater were plastered with posters calling Chomsky un-American. When I came in a tall Read More

By Jonathan Liu 10/09/06 12:00am

The Old Campus Quarrel, Fought to a Standstill Again

To judge from What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts?, Michael Bérubé, a literature professor at Penn State, seems to be one of those strange academics who actually enjoys the undergraduates. While teaching William Dean Howells’ The Rise of Silas Lapham, for instance, he gets at the issue of social capital without help from Karl Marx Read More

By Philip Weiss 10/09/06 12:00am

Mamet Embraces Ritual, Spews Venom at Lapsed Jews

A book about Jewishness by the playwright David Mamet, you might expect it to be personal, even confessional. Here’s a statement from page 134: “To me, real life consists in belonging.” That is direct and sincere.

It’s the only time. The rest of the book, the author is behind a curtain. He does not speak Read More

By Staff 9/24/06 10:27am

Chomsky and Chavez– The Left Is Back!

When is the last time the New York Times did major stories on Noam Chomsky two days in a row, one jumping off the front page, and excerpted his work? Like… never.

Let’s understand what’s going on. All the American politicians may be denouncing Hugo Chavez, but he’s gotten into the water supply. His Diablo Read More

By Staff 3/29/06 12:54pm

Jews in the establishment

Noam Chomsky has, on Znet (at zmag.org), now joined the chorus criticizing the Walt-Mearsheimer article in LRB on the power of the Israel lobby. Chomsky gives the authors credit for debating a verboten subject, but says, It’s the oil and corporate interests, stupid (that have dictated policy in the Mideast).
It’s typical of Chomsky, Read More