Althouse: "What's that? Now it's making an appeal to reason? Never! Do you hear me, you eloquent, well-read behemoth? Never!"

June 2, 2009

"What's that? Now it's making an appeal to reason? Never! Do you hear me, you eloquent, well-read behemoth? Never!"

"We'll die before we recognize what we secretly know to be true! The cognitive dissonance only makes our denial stronger! We have but one hope left: passive-aggressive slights disguised as impersonal discourse. Okay, everyone, careful now…careful… if this is going to work, we have to arrogantly assume that it won't be smart enough to catch on to our attempt to salvage some feeling of superiority and — oh, God, it's calling us out! Quick, avoid eye contact and stammer an apology! Tell it we were just joking! Tell it we were joking!"

15 comments:

Tibore said...: I take it that author's just discovered the 9/11 "Truth" movement.; 6/2/09, 12:01 PM
rhhardin said...: The thing about proper dog pictures is, as Thurber said, they should represent intelligence and repose.

This morning,
neighbor on cell phone.

Woman with bike trailer, never seen before.

What was that? query seconds later.; 6/2/09, 12:07 PM
rhhardin said...: Obama speech drinking game.

``And that's why'' sentence beginnings, usually connecting false premise to terrible idea.; 6/2/09, 12:36 PM
bagoh20 said...: rhhardin,

Are you hoping to train the dog to cut that grass...someday?; 6/2/09, 12:42 PM
Anonymous said...: Obama speech drinking game: Reject the false choice between two things, neither of which you can possibly get more of without giving up some of the other.; 6/2/09, 12:46 PM
traditionalguy said...: This eloquently written plea sounds to me like a poor guy who runs into Revenant and Hdhouse agreeing together against his position on something.; 6/2/09, 1:02 PM
Ron said...: An Onion article the Summa Theologica of our political discourse at present. Go Figure!; 6/2/09, 1:03 PM
Unknown said...: Obama speech drinking game: deny emphatically any desire to have the federal government involved in X, while announcing a plan to involve the federal government in X.; 6/2/09, 1:04 PM
AlphaLiberal said...: Sounds like a guide to debating in the Althousiania fever swamps:

Gah! It's calmly and evenhandedly deflecting everything we're throwing at it. Our deductive fallacies are only making it stronger! Wait…what on earth is it doing now? Oh, no, it has sources! My God, it's defending itself with ironclad sources! Someone stop the citing! Please, please stop the citing!

No, I haven't been debating The Onion. :^); 6/2/09, 1:08 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: ..whenever you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however improbable must be an argument at Althouse ;); 6/2/09, 1:29 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Ha ha ha. Yay!

* dances, the outrageous fallacy dance *

But why hold back? The author left out post hoc ergo propter hoc presently being hurled against O'Reilly and the famously overused red herring, the ad populum and its cohort ad numeratum with their appeals to irrelevant and poorly conducted polls and to ratings and such, ad verecundiam, ad ignorantiam, ad baculum, ad misericordiam, ad absurdum, ad antiguitan and its converse
ad novum, ad nauseam which we get so much of right here, and ad logicam, among others we recognize when we see them. If only new ones would be contrived to keep us amused. I'm still thinking up a name for arguments centered on racial guilt that is distorted and internalized but not acknowledged but rather is projected onto another group, perhaps argumentum ad natio as we've seen just now with Sotomayer, and fallacious arguments centered on specific education as we saw in '05 with Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, perhaps argumentum ad erudio.

It fun! But it hardly helps to point these out. As the Onion so aptly satires, people never budge, I find arguers, especially politically ones, to be just that inelastic. They shake their head "no" and hold their arms crossed as you're speaking to them.; 6/2/09, 2:46 PM
Balfegor said...: Obama speech drinking game: Reject the false choice between two things, neither of which you can possibly get more of without giving up some of the other.

"We must reject the false choice between having our cake and eating it too! Yes, we can!"; 6/2/09, 3:41 PM
Unknown said...: Obviously Colbert got on this way before the Onion (truthiness, anyone?) and so, so perfectly, but this is so obviously a caricature of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck et al. There is no question! "You well-read behemoth?" Heh. Love it.; 6/2/09, 4:18 PM
Anonymous said...: Chip: Can't truthfully say LOL.

But I'm grinning. Ear-to-ear.

I just got out of the Tuesday R&D meeting, so anything more than a wan smile means that was great.; 6/2/09, 5:06 PM
Methadras said...: Power to truth. I love the Onion!!!; 6/3/09, 2:26 PM