Colin Sheridan: The Chomsky-Epstein story exposes our obsession with flawed heroes

The Chomsky-Epstein fallout isn’t about one thinker’s failure, but the dangers of idolising power and moral authority

This undated photo released by Democrats at the end of last year shows Jeffrey Epstein talking with Noam Chomsky.

It's with a heavy heart, no doubt, that dozens and dozens of now middle-aged men are removing their Noam Chomsky books from their shelves.

They do it slowly, like someone taking down a framed photograph after a messy divorce: deflated, defeated, and faintly embarrassed at the notion that a small, bespectacled man — whose work they bought but never read — has somehow ended up adjacent to the most grotesque tale of human avarice in modern memory.