Tag: huffington post

#rsrh A quick reminder on ad hominem.

As Ben Domenech noted on Twitter, if you’re a blogger it’s important to get your ad hominem insult up and public today if you want to guarantee that you’ll be keeping off of the Huffington Post’s front page.  Background on this absurd story here: the short version is that the Arisian mind-lords over at HuffPo flailed about like lobotomized geckos to find an excuse to throw Andrew Breitbart off of their front page after they invited him on it, and came up with the novel excuse that he had ad-hommed elsewhere.

Hi-jinks, as they said, ensued.

But let’s be clear about something about ad hominem arguments, because the term is horribly misused on the Internet: it is not the same as a direct insult.  Ad hominem is when you bring up a person’s character or actions in order to try to invalidate the person’s argument; put more simply, it attempts to suggest that being wicked means that you can’t ever happen to be right about something.  Which is of course absurd.

So: if I write, say, that  Arianna Huffington is wrong about health care rationing because she’s an easily-scared poopyhead… well, that’s an ad hominem argument.  After all, her recto-cranial inversion has nothing to do with her (I assume) blind support of Obamacare, and it would be highly illogical of me to suggest that it did.  But if I write that Arianna Huffington is a miserable person because she’s an easily-scared poopyhead… well, that’s a direct insult and a mean thing to say – but it’s not an ad hominem.

I hope that this clears things up for people.

#rsrh Schrodinger’s Greene (D CAND, SC-SEN)

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The Huffington Post is highly upset (but hiding it fairly well) that Sen John Cornyn of the NRSC is happily using the awkwardness that is the Alvin Greene candidacy for pushback against the Left’s peculiar notion that the Democratic party is somehow the mainstream one of the two in American politics.  Normally, I wouldn’t care overmuch for how much this upsets the HuffPo; but it’s funny to see a website so discombobulated that it can’t even keep track of its own argument.  To wit:

And yet, the unemployed veteran — who never did any formal campaigning — has been the most covered candidate of any running for office this cycle.

[snip]

And to the extent that voters are not aware of how odd both he and his campaign truly are, the impression can be left that it is a high-profile Democrat (not some mysterious eccentric) whose skeletons are being dragged out of the closet.

Bolding mine, in both places.  It’s one or the other, HuffPo.  You can’t complain about Alvin Greene being the subject of massive media attention and then pretend that the voters aren’t then going to be aware of the… unique nature… of who Sen Cornyn’s talking about.  OK, fine, you can, but it just won’t work.

Unfair?  Since when did the Huffington Post care about fairness?  As I like to say: Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.

Moe Lane

Does the Huffington Post not read its own writers?

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I can’t say that I blame them if they don’t, but surely if HuffPo’s own Peter Dreier can feverishly and masochistically [verb deleted in the interests of good taste] to the thought of the Evil VRWC coming to get him, surely they can let Glenn Beck use a Niemoller reference wrt Fox News.  I mean, fair’s fair: either HuffPo shouldn’t do it either, or else Glenn Beck can.  Whining about the latter emulating the former’s example seems… goofy.

I mean, show some professional pride, guys.  I understand that you’re not paid to think, but try not to make the rest of us look bad, OK?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Peter Dreier staples one hand to forehead.

Delicacy prevents me from commenting about what the other hand is apparently doing.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I don’t know what’s funnier about this particular ‘first-they-came’ piece from HuffPo:

  • That the author apparently seriously expects people to believe that ACORN, SEIU, the Apollo Alliance, the Center for American Progress, the Sierra Club, the National Organization of Women, ‘community organizers,’ AFSCME, the National Council of La Raza, the NAACP, the ACLU, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Council of Churches, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the AARP, the Teamsters, the Catholic Worker, UNITE HERE, the Immigrant Solidarity Network, the National Education Association, the U.S. Student Association, and/or the American Association of University Professors are not part and parcel of the Democratic Party;
  • Or that the author apparently believes that Big Business, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs, the Religious Right, the Wall Street Journal, Mitch McConnell, and/or Karl Rove can agree on anything, down to and including what time it is.

It’s like these people want to imagine a boot stomping on their faces – forever.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Dodd lying to Left over online lender lobbyist ties?

Credit where credit is due: this is a nice piece of reporting on Dodd by the Huffington Post. The title (“Dodd Dinner With Online Payday Lenders Transforms Into Fundraiser“) explains a bit already, but the background is this: there’s a lobbying group called the Online Lenders Alliance.  Fair enough.  They’re throwing a conference this week. So far, so good.  There’s a bunch of people from Congress involved or speaking, on both sides of the aisle.  Fine*.  Senator Dodd was one of the scheduled Senators for the event, except when asked about it first his staff, then Dodd himself flatly denied that he was there on OLA’s behalf at all; it was an independent fundraising dinner.  Nothing unusu… wait, what?

Inside the restaurant, Dodd staffers said the dinner, which was not open to press, was not even sponsored by the Online Lenders Alliance.

The dinner “is not an OLA event,” OLA spokeswoman Lisa McGreevy said in a subsequent phone interview. But the OLA agenda lists a Dodd dinner — was there a mixup?

“I don’t think there was any mixup,” she said. “There is a fundraiser tonight for Senator Dodd.”

McGreevy added: “There may be some OLA people there.”

Continue reading Dodd lying to Left over online lender lobbyist ties?

The Huffington Post Gleefully Falls for a Hoax. [UPDATE] They almost sound sorry for this one.

I guess that they really have joined the ranks of the media.

[UPDATE]: HuffPo now regrets the error.  Full points for retracting it in the story itself; 75% off the total for blaming it on a third party and not their own shoddy fact-checking.

They’re playing the same behavior pattern of slovenly reporting. In this case, failing to confirm before they screamed and leaped. Via Hot Air Headlines, johnny dollar has the details: to summarize, a video used by the HuffPo that purported to have a radio talk-show host compare Eric Holder to a monkey turned out to been a cheesy overdub. One that would have been obvious to anybody who examined the original feed Continue reading The Huffington Post Gleefully Falls for a Hoax. [UPDATE] They almost sound sorry for this one.