Whether you agree with Noam Chomsky's opinions or not, he's a brilliant and pretty awesome person. He's also fantastic about responding to emails and has been answering my questions since I was in high school. Here is his response to an email I sent him about the election in Iceland and comedy politics, the almost non-existent field that I want to go into and wrote my law school personal statements about, in general:
"Well, it's an old tradition. In the feudal courts, the only people with brains were the jesters -- and they were given some leeway. Same in totalitarian states. Satirists were given some room, and used it well."
There's one more citation to one of the most cited people in the history of humanity, on maybe one of the least remarked about fields, with his permission.
