It is true that Chomsky seems to have some religious zealots behind him instead of people using him as a reference. He has amazing points in his verbose books with proof of his main theme: the U.S. should look at itself with same mirror that it holds to others. What is a terrorist? What are acts of terrorism? Chomsky constantly covers these points in many of his books. However, Chomsky has been at this a long time now and I think he knows that he is only going to get a few points across to people in talks. His most popular book was 911, a very short book made up of short interviews from sources around the world just after September 11, 2001. His most eye opening book for me was Hegemony or Survival which took me months to read and research. Every other page I was confronted with information that I had never heard before: Israel has nuclear weapons? I felt very naive and had to do a great deal of follow up reading. The farther you really get into Chomsky's writings the more you realize what he is best at: reading through many documents and presenting important facts to tie together information with an encyclopedic memory for past events. He is not a rock star, he is not cool, he shouldn't be a brand. He is just a professor that was willing to break conventional wisdom and look at things with a fresh mind. Is he still doing that? I don't think I can look back far enough to tell you. I do know that I trust an author that tells me not to trust him and lets me check the references myself. That is why his books take me so long to read, and are so important to me.