Chomsky Lecture in New Mexico

Okay, so I'm a radical leftist (half-an-anarchist, half-a-Green). No big deal, really, except when it is. There are problems of a personaI sort in being a lone or near-lone leftist in a right-wing family: I like almost all of my extended family, but none of them are even lickspittle liberals, much less leftists. In fact, most of them are right-wingers. So how do we negotiate the interpersonal spaces where politics and worldviews are likely to ignite bad feelings? We do it mainly by the chief of all American familial coping mechanisms: silence and ignorance.

That is, I try to avoid entering all but the most obnoxious political discussions, and they all seem perfectly willing -- since, despite having right-wing political sensibilities, in practice they're all terribly apolitical -- to avoid most political issues, for fear of engaging me and having to listen to reasoned, passionate arguments. Hey, whatever keeps the food on the table at holiday dinners, right?

But, here's the rub: what happens when Kendall-the-radical wants one of his several fundamentalist-Christian-minister sisters or brothers-in-law to go to Kiva Auditorium in Albuquerque -- where they all live -- to record a Noam Chomsky lecture? (Seemed an ideal next-gift-occasion gift to me, costing only one VHS tape and a few hours of time.)

It's the kind of favor I'd do for them, except when I wouldn't. On second thought, I wouldn't go down to an auditorium in Dallas and record some fundamentalist self-help guru for my sisters or brothers-in-law. And I don't suppose that I could explain to them that Chomsky, being the opposite of the kind of thing that the mainstream media system wants to promote, can't be located as easily as some idiotic fundamentalist Elmer Gantry, all of whom have mini-media empires of their own.

Damn. I'll just read it on the Web. And you can too.