I see that Rich Crowther at Conservatives for Palin has written a second “Skinny White Sunday” post which misrepresents me in the guise of congratulating me for my “courage”.
Big whoop. Being complimented on my “courage” means little coming from someone so intellectually dishonest.
‘Nuff said. I have better things to do with my time than to pay his b.s. any further mind.
But it occurs to me that Mr. Crowther’s writings, as well as much else at the C4P website, provide excellent examples for anyone who might be studying the use of logic (or rather, its lack) and reason (or rather, its lack) in public discourse. There are lots of good sources on the Internet or elsewhere on logical fallacies — see, for example,
- Logical Fallacies: An Encyclopedia of Errors of Reasoning
- Fallacy (Wikipedia article)
- Dr. Michael C. Labossiere’s piece on logical fallacies (at the Nizkor project)
I invite you to consult any of these resources and see how many logical fallacies you can detect in Mr. Crowther’s article:
- 2/21/2010. “Skinny White Sunday: Profanity Phil Revisited; Updated” by Rich Crowther (Conservatives for Palin).
To locate all his fallacies accurately, you’ll need to refer to his prior “Skinny White Sunday” post & my reponse to it:
- 2/14/2010. “Skinny White Sunday: Alaska Palm Pilot Rocks!” by Rich Crowther (Conservatives for Palin).
- 2/16/2010. “Conservatives for Palin & civility: Fairly unbalanced” by Melissa S. Green (Henkimaa).
(Additional background posts are listed below.)
For extra credit, do the same for any other of Rich Crowther’s posts.
Have fun!
Background posts: The full conversation in the Alaska progressive blogosphere on civility
- 2/6/2010. “Saradise Lost – Book 4 – Chapter 43 – What a SLUT! – Updated” by Phil Munger (Progressive Alaska).
- 2/8/2010. “Saradise Lost and Found – Chapter 12 – Saint or Slut? – A New PA Poll” by Phil Munger (Progressive Alaska).
- 2/8/2010. “Progressive bloggers on Palin: Civility versus namecalling” by Melissa S. Green (Henkimaa).
- 2/9/2010. “PA’s Palin Poll – A Critical View by a Close Friend” — crosspost at Progressive Alaska of my post above , but with its own set of comments.
- 2/10/2010. “Blogger Tourettes” by Steve Aufrecht (What Do I Know?)
- 2/10/2010. “PA’s Palin Poll – Another Critical View by Another Close Friend” — crosspost at Progressive Alaska of Steve’s post above , but with its own set of comments.
- 2/11/2010. “Is it possible to reason with Palin’s “Rebiblicans”? by Linda Kellen Biegel (Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis).
- 2/12/2010. “PA’s Palin Poll – A Thoughtful View by Another Friend” — crosspost at Progressive Alaska of Linda’s post above , but with its own set of comments.
- 2/15/2010. “PA’s Apology to Sarah Palin” by Phil Munger (Progressive Alaska). Originally titled “PA’s Apology to Sarah Palin on the Eve of Her $$$100K Appearance Before the National Liquor Sellers’ Convention.”
- 2/15/2010. “Progressives, civility, & Palin: Anatomy of an apology” by Melissa S. Green (Henkimaa).
- 2/15/2010. “PA’s Apology to Readers Who Were Offended by PA’s Use of a Controversial Term for the Crazy Woman” by Phil Munger (Progressive Alaska).
- 2/16/2010. “There Can Be Civil Disagreements” by Steve Aufrecht (What Do I Know?)
May we have your critique of his articles to compare our research to?
I critiqued his previous “Skinny White Sunday” post that mentioned me in my 2/16 post “Conservatives for Palin & civility: Fairly unbalanced”. which is linked in this article. It didn’t occur to me at the time to do a formal critique of the logical fallacies contained within it — though there are a number of them, as there are in the more recent post. And in other posts he has written as well.
For example, yesterday Jesse Griffin (“Gryphen”) at Immoral Minority wrote two posts which presented factual information about the birth of Palin’s youngest child Trig — “A Tale of Two Babies by Sarah Palin” and “A Doctor’s response to my ‘Tale of Two Babies’ post”. Crowther’s reaction is in the form of a parody, “A Tale Of Two Ears by Jesse Griffin”, that is, in essence, a post-length ad hominem attack on Gryphen that does nothing to disprove anything that Gryphen claims. Ad hominem attacks (see also this explanation) are not appeals to reason, but to prejudice — Crowther uses this type of logical fallacy frequently. (As, unfortunately, do many other people in all areas of political discussion — right left center & upside down.) In particular, Crowther uses ad hominem his most recent “Skinny White Sunday” post about me in attacking all Alaska progressive bloggers in general.
Some other logical fallacies I detect in Crowther’s arguments include appeals to popularity (Palin is popular with everyone over here at C4P, so we’re always right about her & everybody who criticizes her is wrong about her), red herrings (those meanie Alaska progressive bloggers are always meanies to Sarah Palin, therefore nothing they say about her could possibly be true) — the list goes on.
Is it possible that Crowther depends upon these fallacies because he hasn’t got the intellectual cojones to argue based on reason & fact? Beats me. But I see no reason to engage in discussion at all with someone whose arguments begin & end in intellectual dishonesty.