Subject: re : 8 . 764 , disc : noam chomsky : a life of dissent

i read robert f . barsky 's reply to postal 's and pullum 's comments about feargul murphy 's review of his ( barsky 's ) book and found it odd , to say the least . about three quarters of barsky 's reply do ( does ? ) not deal with the postal - pullum comments about murphy 's review for the linguist but with a review by pullum for ' nature ' of barsky 's book . i can understand that barsky feels the need to defend himself against pullum ( who would n't ) , but most of what he says is simply irrelevant to the issue at hand . postal & pullum wrote a reply to murphy , not to barsky . but even granting that this was a welcome opportunity for barsky to reply to pullum 's ' nature ' review , i see no justification for the fact that this reply deals almost exclusively with chomsky 's non-linguistic activities , which were not at issue in p&p 's reply to murphy . p&p are concerned with what they take to be inaccuracies being spread by murphy ( and barsky ) about one specific issue : the politics of the mit linguistics department at a certain point in history . p&p mention chomsky 's non-academic political activities only very briefly , and only insofar as they are relevant to chomsky the linguist : they concern murphy 's strangely irrelevant remark that " chomsky was at this time simply very busy with other issues like the vietnam war " . ( i can only understand this remark , which is quoted by p&p as paraphrasing barsky , as insinuating that one ought not criticize chomsky 's academic politics because from someone who has the courage to speak out against the vietnam war anything goes ) . the following comment by barsky summarizes for me the tone and tenor of his entire reply : " pullum seems to want to tell all of us what to do and how to think . " this is not an argument , it 's low-level denigration . it reminds me of presidential debates . to quote barsky : " this is extremely unnerving . " knud lambrecht department of french & italian university of texas , austin
