Wonderful Noam
Sir: While I have never had much sympathy with the political atti- tudes which colour the editorial stance of the SPECTATOR, I have al- ways, until recently, had consider- able respect for the paper as a Journal of opinion of the moderate and responsible right. I use the epithets 'moderate' and 'respon- sible' to suggest that any political Comment should be based upon reasoned argument and accepted facts, rather than upon blind and unsubstantiated prejudices. Since the paper acquired its new—how shall 1 say?—'style', the amount of the former (at least in the front Portion) has diminished in direct proportion to the increase in the latter.
The latest and surely the gross- est example of the kind of clap- trap with which ajournal of opinion should know better than to insult the intelligence of its readers is 'Spectator's' description
(6 February) of Professor Noam Chomsky as 'an ignorant Ameri- can radical'. If such a statement had been made in a review of one
of Chomsky's political works (say, American Power and the New Mandarins—and has 'Spectator's' read that beautifully lucid polemic against the liberal academic estab-
lishment?), it might just have been defensible. That it should be made as part of a lightweight and misin- formed critique of Chomsky's con- tributions to linguistic and political thought is almost, but not quite, beyond belief.
It is not quite beyond belief be- cause, regrettably, one has come to expect this kind of mind-stulti- fying rubbish from 'Spectator'. Is it not about time that the Notebook Was shown to contain something other than doodles and drivel of this kind or, in deference to the memory of its earlier, and intelli- gent, authors, closed altogether?
Alan Alexander Department of Politics, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading
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