I must admit I didn't now much about the man, and despite reading a few articulate articles from him, I never gave him much interest.

That changed when I watched a documentary featuring him and his work, Manufacturing Consent. It turns out that Noam Chomsky is a Linguistic academic, his job is to study language structure, words meanings, and rethoric. That apparently lead him to understand the constitution of language and how we use it. From that point, he jumped to politics rethoric and message manipulation, understanding more deeply the political messages that politicians are trying to vehicle.

Some say he is a linguistic genius, a very talented academic who went beyond his role. Throughout the documentary, his speech is very articule, yet his ideas are very simple and easy to understand. He is apparently interested by the average man speeching ability and also his comprehension ability. He doesn't believe in mass stupidity, only in mass manipulation. As easily can the mass be manipulated, the mass is not stupid and will jump the gun if given an opportunity and prove itself to be smarter than the mass leaders. History has plenty of examples of such instances.

Manufacturing consent, one of his first book I believe, is to explain to the average man how the mass media is a cynical and evil machine that need to be combatted daily so we can be liberated in our mind and body. These are dangerous ideas in a world dominated by mass media corporations, and this is probably why he is often marginalized and demonized by both the liberal and conservative media, and portrayed as the Anti-Christ by religious fanatics and corporation alike.

more about the man here:
Noam Chomsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I would highly recommend reading, studying and following his work, his language is very accessible,