Aside from all of the context that we obviously do have, it might have helped if when Chomsky was asked about his association with Epstein, he didn’t say “it’s none of your business” and that the conversations were “valuable.” Maybe, if this master of media criticism (we know thanks to the book he mostly didn’t write) wanted to prevent us from falling for smears based on these “dubious” situations, he could have used his high social standing to get ahead of these stories a little bit and “set the record straight.” Well, unless the record is being set straight now, in which case it makes sense why he’d be defensive and secretive like we’ve already seen.