Sounder » Sun Apr 06, 2014 11:20 am wrote:jakell » Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:15 am wrote:Is this 'steering culpability' another example of him shifting focus in a way that displeases people. like him steering culpability via him not favouring the conspiratorial angle around 9/11?
It sounds like a woolly phrase that would be hard to prove or disprove.
It does sound clumsy.
The intention is not to prove anything, simply to point out that ‘gatekeeper’ job is to limit discussion while appearing to ‘represent’ a chosen audience. Sort of like what that mini-Chomsky AD does when he tosses anti-fascism chaff at private banker roles in destroying nation states for profit, and other sensitive topics.
We could possibly massage that and call it a gatekeeper role, in that a job is something that has an external form that imposes restrictions, whereas a role is something you can confer upon yourself, or even just something you stumble across and slip into. It could be said that absolutely anyone who achieves a level of prominence and/or respect becomes a sort of a gatekeeper, for good or for ill, it doesn't really require the externalities that 'job' implies.
In the 'role' sense, being a gatekeeper is merely applying rigour and discrimination for the purposes of clarity**, and this is what I see Chomsky as doing. To use the word job implies that he is someone's bitch.
This sort of intersects with what you were saying about RI's own 'gatekeeper', but I don't really see much focus and rigour there, just a vast conglomeration of 'stuff' that accumulates to form a sort of dam, ie not really a door, just a dumb barrier.
**ETA not always so (as described in the following paragraph), but this is the most positive application.