The (objective?) truth is, there’s just as much slanted bullshit on MSNBC as there is on Fox News, and both still find time to do important, substantive reporting. And it’s not the administration’s job to certify, censor or restrict the access of news organizations.

But this conern with the President delivering a partisan political speech to schoolkids didn’t start with Obama. We have a rich history of opposing these type of events going back to the 1980s.

Reagan was criticized for it, and when Bush 1 did it, the Democrat majority in Congress at that time had the GAO investigate, and later summoned Bush 1 administration officials to Capitol Hill for congressional hearings.

The point being, there has always been partisan politics. This is really nothing new.

Let’s be fair. Many liberals would like nothing better than to see the Fairness Doctrine return for no other reason than to feed their seemingly insatiable appetites for government intervention!

Merry Christmas!

When you’re so convinced your idea is correct, you quit holding it out for scrutiny. And when you bust it down to a bumper sticker, you create a legion of believers who might or might not really understand the philosophical implications.

Great find, Mike (and Crowd).

It’s sort of strange, but as I started reading that article, I actually had faint thoughts related to the “conclusion” that conservatives tend to commit the one fallacy and liberals the other. So it must be true!

So many stovepipes in this world, maybe we WILL just all go up in smoke.

Love the blog, Mr. Pigott.

The fact McCain accepted certain donations is not in and of itself an invalidation of whatever statement then gets connected to it.

The fact Obama has certain political debts to repay a Chicago machine does not equate to proof that he is being dishonest about his politics.

The examples I use above are meant to highlight the absurdity of ad hominem in action. Calling McCain “out of touch” is NOT ad hominem, it is a direct statement that MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be true. It is unsubstantiated.

Calling Obama ‘inexperienced’ is NOT ad hominem – it is merely an unsubstantiated assertion.

I am not seeking to control discourse. I am seeking to re-engage it. Too much of what passes for political communication and debate is nothing more than cheerleading and smears. It does not seek to understand or persuade, but rather to self-ingratiate and to bully.

Funny that you should call me a liberal – there are many that would call me a conservative. I am a lowercase-L libertarian, a pragmatist with some fairly inviolate convictions. And one of those convictions is we’d be far better off if the arena of ideas contained actual ideas instead of ideologies.

Ad hominem attacks are ok; they are allowed under the Constitution. Read up on Times v. Sullivan. Calling names is *allowed*. And necessary in robust debate in a democracy.

People need to be able to discuss freely their concerns about McCain taking big oil money — and it’s more than fine to posit it could influence him, and to restrict that is to restrict the abilit of a free people to call politicians to account. They aren’t required to do this in some mannered way to pass a debating contest in a boys’ Latin class.

By the same token, read the New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza that in fact looks deeply into Obama’s paying of his dues to this very Chicago machine you reference. This isn’t “ad hominem”.

Most of the time on the Internet, when people raise the flag of “ad hominem,” they mean “You don’t get to criticize me forcefully because I’m right”.

It’s funny you, as a liberal, are finding “acceptable” the statement that John McCain is out of touch with the average American. He isn’t. You are. His inability to type on a computer isn’t a problem for his supporters. I’m not one fo them. But I respect that he has a following, and they represent average people with normal values whom you are not able to persuade or convince with your own rhetoric. That’s why you seek to control discourse.

However, in the case of this pundit, he’s not doing any service to his side of the argument by suggesting that to believe otherwise is simply “stupid.” Even if he has his reasons and they’re legitimate — and I’m sure he does, and I’m sure most of them are — when the people he’s trying to persuade hear that sort of dig, they get defensive.

You can reason with open-minded, even-keeled people. You cannot begin to reason with defensive people who are now pissed at you.

Is it better to say they “fell for the deception”?
Probably, but emotions are running wild it seems.

You are non but the most reasonable of beings.

There are those who unknowingly sin, who simply haven’t asked the question “what answer or action would have placated me?”

There are those who commit the sin of Omission, failing to hold their own candidate accountable to the same line of reasoning.

There are those who commit the sin of Commission, willingly flinging accusations knowing in their hearts there is no circumstance under which they would not.

The burden on US now, being aware of the Safe Harbor fallacy, is the we now cannot seek contrition for the unknowing violation. It’s called being a grown-up.