Take a look at the comments on this article. Most of them are about Chomsky as a provocative person and how it relates to the question of email origins, not the issue itself. Famous-Provocative-Person-X wades into any discussion and suddenly we're off into the weeds. That's true whether you can draw a link or not. The issue of a link is irrelevant, at least as far as I can tell so far from the comments. (I'd argue that any _real_ story, as opposed to the made up ones I invented, would have some kind of link like this. Otherwise the game would just be too obvious)
The point being I flag things that generate lots of off-topic, emotionally-laden comment-noise. I might have gotten a little flag-happy with this article. Don't know. Been wrong lots of times before. Quite honestly I grow tired of seeing any famous person or brand name on HN. It's almost always an indication of time-wasting nonsense ahead.