Catch me in the Guardian ... while you can!

That man of the world Adrian McKinty alerted me to Noam Chomsky's commentary on Egypt this week on the Guardian's Web site. Whatever one thinks of Chomsky's politics, his prose style leaves much to be desired, and I wrote as much in a comment at the Guardian's site yesterday.

By today, my comment had been replaced by a notice that "This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards."

So I hardly expect my reply to last any longer. In case it, too, has been deemed to fall short of the Guardian's community standards by the time you get around to clicking the link at the beginning of this sentence, here it is:

6 February 2011 2:28AM

I have learned much about the Guardian's editorial policy from this debate. One may safely accuse authors and commenters of communism, fascism, anti-semitism, anti-Arabism, anti-Americanism, pro-Americanism, depravity, degeneracy, illiteracy, stupidity, and bad spelling, but dare suggest — not state outwardly, not even imply, but merely suggest — that a prominent author gets hands-off treatment from editors, and your comment will be removed faster than if you criticized the British Royal Family at Speaker's [sic--author's error] Corner.

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P.S.

Right on schedule, the Guardian has deleted that comment, too. So it's official: Criticism of the Guardian on the Guardian's Web site is verboten.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Where is the justice in crime fiction?, or Noam Chomsky gets his ass kicked

We were talking about Madness and Civilization the other night, and not as commentary on our fellow drinkers at Philadelphia's press club.

The talk got me interested in Michel Foucault, that French historian, philosopher and public intellectual (though he might have rejected the intellectual designation), and I realized that he belongs here. He wrote and talked about crime, punishment, madness, sex and death, after all.

It's his invocation and critique of justice, though, that caught my attention because I realized how rarely crime writing concerns itself with justice, at least in the social, society-building sense. How many crime novels take the perp through the criminal justice system, for example? What does it imply about Western crime stories that they generally end just before the justice system swings into action (or before it gets a chance to do so)?

(See Foucault debate Noam Chomsky here and here. See Chomsky shrink before your eyes, especially around 3:50 of the second clip. Click here for the only effort I know to bring justice into the crime-fiction discussion.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010