What has been constructed is this sort of grotesque trinity comprised of myself, Bill Maher and Noam Chomsky. In the Saturday New York Times, Frank Rich tried in his way to defend us by arguing for our complete lack of importance, by saying that any substitute weather forecaster on TV has more influence than any of us. Well, it's not true of course. Excuse me, but Noam Chomsky is quite a bit more than a distinguished linguist. Our critics are up in arms against us because we do have a degree of influence. But our own "defenders" are reduced to saying, "Well, leave the poor things alone, they're quite obscure anyway. "
Certainly Chomsky has a huge influence on the so-called left "thinkers", especially in academia. It was silly for Frank Rich to say otherwise.