It's Too Late
And you shall know them by the trail of emails
Noam Chomsky is going out like Joe Paterno. Both built an iconic reputation through a lifetime of apparent goodwill, only to see it lost in a matter of a few weeks, when their association with a known child molester (that’s what my generation was warned of, when we were growing up) was revealed to the public.
Paterno’s case was far worse, ultimately, as he continued to provide his friend and Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky opportunities for years, knowing what he had done to a series of boys. Chomsky, on the other hand, offered advice to Jeffrey Epstein, on how he might repair his public image.
At 4:27 a.m. on Saturday, February 23, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein solicited Noam Chomsky’s advice regarding “how I handle my putrid press. its is spiraling out of control .” Epstein’s email to Chomsky shows they had an ongoing communication; Epstein offered advice to Chomsky on how to leave his estate to his second wife, such that his children could not lay claim to it. Late that afternoon, Chomsky replied, confirming he knew Epstein’s press was connected to the similarly-poor coverage of [Harvard President] “Lawrence” [Summers], and avers that when in a similar situation, “I pay no attention.”
Chomsky notes that a response on Epstein’s part will result in further accusations, and asks, “(How do you prove you are not a Neo-Nazi who wants to kill the Jews, or a rapist, or whatever charge comes along?).”
This is the most damning passage, in that it equates an absurdity (Epstein himself was Jewish) with an actuality (Epstein’s lament to Chomsky is he continues being held responsible for the crime to which he pled guilty). Wink-wink, Eppy, I don’t think you are either of those things.
But it’s not really Chomsky’s advisory role (one Chris Hedges dissects) that damns him in the eyes of his former admirers, in so much as his being a willing and active member of Epstein’s network. While Chomsky’s work involved a critical focus on the ways and means of corporate- and state-controlled media framing social class relations, he was a linguist, not an ethnographer. Flying on the Lolita Express and exchanging favors with his subjects was never part of his research methodology.
Chomsky is at the end of his life, at 97 years of age and having suffered a severe, debilitating stroke a few years ago. He is no longer capable of communicating, according to reports. His wife (the one who stand to inherit his full estate (“minus some IP”) issued an ill-advised (by Chomsky himself, from the email exchange with Epstein) missive attempting to separate Chomsky’s legacy from the contents of the Epstein files. In it, she portrayed Chomsky as naive.
She wrote in part: “Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in.”
Her attempt to repair Chomsky’s reputation ran up against a career built on seeing through bullshit. We are expected to believe he did not know Epstein was a convicted pedophile. The email exchange between the two shows he knew why Epstein and “Lawrence” were suffering from public attention.
Only after Epstein’s second arrest in 2019 did we learn the full extent and gravity of what were then accusations—and are now confirmed as heinous crimes against women and children.
Once Epstein pled guilty in 2008, the “accusations” she writes of were legally-proven facts. No one was libeling Epstein by calling him a “pedophile” or “rapist,” from then on. As for the second arrest in 2019—there was never a trial, and the evidence compiled after 2008 (including the email exchanges with Chomsky) remains accusatory, but unproven in court.
The very reason Chomsky corresponded with Epstein was due to intersecting social class interests; Chomsky was himself in the intellectual wing of the ruling class. The very wealthiest appreciate smart people, especially when their smarts can be purchased to advance the goals of the very wealthiest.
The thing with Paterno and Chomsky (and Bill Cosby) is their reputations flipped so late in life, they could do nothing to repair them.