Flying Monkey Shit
Hey, how 'bout that, eh? Pretty fun, huh? I doubt that Atrios reads this blog, so one of his minions must have alerted him to the rebellion in the provinces. I can see him now, looking into his crystal ball, getting that furious, twisted up look on his green face, then shrieking to one of his toadies to release the flying monkeys.
But, hey, where's the Philosoraptor Flying Monkey Defense System? Not that Nancy, Anonymous1022 et. al. needed any help...jeez, they really kicked some ass. Still, I would have thought we'd have a little home-field cheering section...the Raptorettes or something...you know, the old nobody-gets-to-mercilessly-hassle-Winston-but-us business. When I said I'm glad y'all aren't sycophantic I didn't mean you had to be indifferent to an invasion of morons...
The situation seemed to be well-summarized by commenter jb, so I don't feel much of a need to say anything about it.
Aw, heck, it's fun. How 'bout just a couple?
1. My favorite was the you-just-did-this-for-the-links charge.
Fallacy name: ad hominem.
The issue, of course, is whether or not Atrios has gone to crap (an issue that I don't really care about, frankly...I was just cranky that day. Still, that was the issue.) Whether or not I'm a link whore is completely irrelevant. Even link whores make good points. Shrieking about the character of the critic or message-bearer is a favorite ploy in American politics, but it won't fly here. Note that conservatives especially love this strategy, and are fervently employing a version of it on every bit of bad news for them that's come out in October--every bit of news is an October surprise, released by their political enemies. They did this to Kuo, for example. But, of course, we shouldn't really care where the information came from or why it was released--just whether or not it is true.
So congrats to the dittoheads...methodologically speaking, they're on the side of the Bushies.
And your methodological position--as I keep trying to emphasize--is what's most important.
Oh, incidentally: no, I didn't do it for the hits, never thought about the hits, don't care about the hits. Surprised the hell out of me that His Majesty saw or cared about it. (Though it obviously struck a nerve...) (And, cripes, there were a LOT of freaking hits...almost twelve thousand. Ridiculous!) Still, even if I did care, it would be irrelevant.
2. No, no....my absolute favorite was this one, which showed up in many places:
You shouldn't be cricizing Atrios because (L) liberals shouldn't be criticizing each other so close to this important election.
Now, after the monkey shit hit the fan, I sort of worried about this myself. The premiss (L) may or may not be true, but it's freaking hilarious that some commenters were willing to cite (L) against me but fail to note the obvious point that the same criticism applies to Atrios. My post was, recall, in response to Atrios's attack against Beinart et. al. So either (L) is true or it is false. If it is false, then the argument doesn't work against anyone, of course, because it is unsound. If it is true, then it applies to both Atrios and me. Shrill denunciations of me in light of this fact are humorous to say the least.
(Note: I'm not committing my own ad hominem here, because I'm not trying to argue that the charge is invalid because the critics are inconsistent. I'm admitting that I don't know whether (L) is true or not, and merely pointing out their inconsistency.)
Oh, we could go on and on. The most hilarous part might have been the shrill cries of the sycophants trying to refute the claim that they were sycophantic... But these things are almost too obvious to even point out. Anybody with half a brain can see them. Yet many people didn't. Drawing the relevant conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.
Hey, how 'bout that, eh? Pretty fun, huh? I doubt that Atrios reads this blog, so one of his minions must have alerted him to the rebellion in the provinces. I can see him now, looking into his crystal ball, getting that furious, twisted up look on his green face, then shrieking to one of his toadies to release the flying monkeys.
But, hey, where's the Philosoraptor Flying Monkey Defense System? Not that Nancy, Anonymous1022 et. al. needed any help...jeez, they really kicked some ass. Still, I would have thought we'd have a little home-field cheering section...the Raptorettes or something...you know, the old nobody-gets-to-mercilessly-hassle-Winston-but-us business. When I said I'm glad y'all aren't sycophantic I didn't mean you had to be indifferent to an invasion of morons...
The situation seemed to be well-summarized by commenter jb, so I don't feel much of a need to say anything about it.
Aw, heck, it's fun. How 'bout just a couple?
1. My favorite was the you-just-did-this-for-the-links charge.
Fallacy name: ad hominem.
The issue, of course, is whether or not Atrios has gone to crap (an issue that I don't really care about, frankly...I was just cranky that day. Still, that was the issue.) Whether or not I'm a link whore is completely irrelevant. Even link whores make good points. Shrieking about the character of the critic or message-bearer is a favorite ploy in American politics, but it won't fly here. Note that conservatives especially love this strategy, and are fervently employing a version of it on every bit of bad news for them that's come out in October--every bit of news is an October surprise, released by their political enemies. They did this to Kuo, for example. But, of course, we shouldn't really care where the information came from or why it was released--just whether or not it is true.
So congrats to the dittoheads...methodologically speaking, they're on the side of the Bushies.
And your methodological position--as I keep trying to emphasize--is what's most important.
Oh, incidentally: no, I didn't do it for the hits, never thought about the hits, don't care about the hits. Surprised the hell out of me that His Majesty saw or cared about it. (Though it obviously struck a nerve...) (And, cripes, there were a LOT of freaking hits...almost twelve thousand. Ridiculous!) Still, even if I did care, it would be irrelevant.
2. No, no....my absolute favorite was this one, which showed up in many places:
You shouldn't be cricizing Atrios because (L) liberals shouldn't be criticizing each other so close to this important election.
Now, after the monkey shit hit the fan, I sort of worried about this myself. The premiss (L) may or may not be true, but it's freaking hilarious that some commenters were willing to cite (L) against me but fail to note the obvious point that the same criticism applies to Atrios. My post was, recall, in response to Atrios's attack against Beinart et. al. So either (L) is true or it is false. If it is false, then the argument doesn't work against anyone, of course, because it is unsound. If it is true, then it applies to both Atrios and me. Shrill denunciations of me in light of this fact are humorous to say the least.
(Note: I'm not committing my own ad hominem here, because I'm not trying to argue that the charge is invalid because the critics are inconsistent. I'm admitting that I don't know whether (L) is true or not, and merely pointing out their inconsistency.)
Oh, we could go on and on. The most hilarous part might have been the shrill cries of the sycophants trying to refute the claim that they were sycophantic... But these things are almost too obvious to even point out. Anybody with half a brain can see them. Yet many people didn't. Drawing the relevant conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.
posted by Winston Smith at
6:47 AM
2 Comments:
Good god, your comment engine stinks. Sometimes it won't work, sometimes it's a separate pop-up, sometimes not...
Anyway, I went over to Eschaton to see what you were talking about (I hardly ever read Eschaton, it just doesn't seem meaty). Atrios is getting paid, like, full-time? And all he can manage is one-liners and links? Looks like an hour's work a day. Gimme uh break. Philosoraptor is better.
Let's se... premiss L is a variant of Reagan's Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt never speak ill of a fellow Republican. I say it's true, on the grounds that the party that hews to it consistently runs up a better record of wins. This doesn't mean it's ethically right or anything; just that it's pragmatic.
While we're at it, and I know this is heresy, but I propose an exception to the ad hominem fallacy; call it the blown credibility exception. As in "Bush? That son-of-a-bitch? He's lied to us 97 times, and I wouldn't believe him now if he said the sky was blue!" Under the blown credibility exception, it's permissible adopt an ad hominem stance aganst someone if only a fool would give him the benefit of a doubt (i.e. a con man who's been caught before). As for myself, I have held most Republicans under the blown credibility exception since the Reagan administration. Unfair, you say? But I was usually right, and it saved a lot of time: I could go ahead and know with confidence that there WAS a scam, even if the details were not going to come out for several years, as is usually the case.
Atrios is getting paid, like, full-time? And all he can manage is one-liners and links?
Actually, it's the other way around. He has a full time job, Eschaton is part time.
re: the credibility exception
There is another exception at work you know. It's called the class exception. People who are below "us" in social rank are not exempt from ad hominem attacks. You see this all over the place, maybe even here.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home