Attack of the Ad Hominem Attacks

I like to imagine that somewhere out there is a dead languages fanatic who thought to copyright the term "ad hominem" years ago and who's suddenly wondering why only now, with the rise of our perpetually outraged political discourse, he's seeing royalty checks pour in. When it comes to partisan debate these days, especially on the internet, accusing someone of making an "ad hominem attack" is, ironically, as cliché as calling somebody a Nazi.

So it's not surprising that Andrew Breitbart's misnomered "Big Journalism" site is howling at anyone and everyone who's given up trying to debate the actual arguments of its illustrious founder, claiming that they're engaging in ad hominem warfare. Among that anyone and everyone: yours truly.

From a piece written by Alexander Marlow and posted late last month on the site:

"Here are some examples of these emotive, anti-intellectual smears against Breitbart himself published at… the Huffington Post itself. I did a good-faith search through the (AOL/)HuffPo archives to isolate ad hominem they have published against Breitbart... Chez Pazienza, Editor of Deus Ex Malcontent, Author, in his piece 'ABC News to Redeem Guy With No Redeeming Qualities':

'[Breitbart] is... a serial liar and a scam artist. [...] he’s a raging maniac [...] he’s ignored facts, knowingly created phony scandals, willfully aided, abetted and perpetuated hoaxes engineered by irresponsible con-men like himself [...] He’s a pompous schoolyard bully [...] jackass..."

The point Marlow's trying to make is that I and those like me who no longer bother to debate issues with Andrew Breitbart and by now simply consider the source and reference that source in our criticism of him make statements that should be immediately dismissed -- all because we're employing what's widely considered to be an argumentative fallacy. Here's the thing, though: It's possible for someone to damage his or her reputation so profoundly that after a while it actually becomes acceptable to hammer the person rather than the argument he or she is making. In the case of Breitbart it works something like this: It isn't even necessary to fight with him anymore -- to try to refute his arguments and to debate him like he's an actual adult -- because he's fucked his credibility so entirely, over and over again, that for the most part his views don't even merit consideration. I didn't dislike Breitbart to begin with and now verbally beat up on him because of it; he's earned my derision over time and through a whole lot of inexcusable behavior, and that's made any viewpoint his name is attached to almost instantly suspect.

For the record -- and I've said this before, ironically in the very piece Marlow quoted from the Huffington Post -- I couldn't care less if Andrew Breitbart has an opinion different from mine. Not only is he entitled to believe whatever the hell he wants, he has every right to shout his beliefs from the highest rooftop and to poke those who disagree with him with a stick if that's what gets him off. Being a provocateur isn't a sin and, to his credit, Breitbart's very good at it. Just about everyone who does the online political pundit thing these days is partially in show business; it's the nature of the game. What separates Breitbart from the rest of the pack, though, is his blatant disregard for the facts and his willful lack of shame when it comes to perpetuating hoaxes that take a real-world toll on the innocent. I've said before that as a guy who makes a habit of pissing people off, I actually have a kind of fondness for him; I can certainly identify with that, even though I think Breitbart takes it to truly silly and juvenile depths and tends to behave like a cheap bully. But the crap he's pulled and perpetuated -- for me it began with his refusal to admit his complicity in James O'Keefe's ACORN tape fraud and culminated with the Shirley Sherrod lie -- tarnishes his ability to be taken seriously to the extent that it doesn't even make sense anymore, when addressing him and his behavior since, to waste your time dredging it all up.

It's easier to just say that he's full of shit -- and saying so is no longer an ad hominem attack or an argumentative fallacy, it's just reality. And I wasn't the one who made it that way. I didn't screw Breitbart's credibility -- he did.

Related: DXM: The Notorious "Big"/2.4.10

Tape Worms

In terms of real world impact, this won't make a dent in the Adamantium biases of the Fox News crowd -- the people who think James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles should have elementary schools named after them.

But if antiquated notions like the truth matter to you, those two -- as well as Fox and the right's answer to P.T. Barnum, Andrew Breitbart -- are sucking down a giant load of fail this morning.

Her Mind Is Aglow with Whirling, Transient Nodes of Thought Careening Through a Cosmic Vapor of Invention

You know, I have to admit, I sat up pretty late last night trying to come up with something clever to do with this item.

I thought maybe I'd do a "Hannah Giles Orders Take-Out Chinese" theme, which would feature the bikini-clad Princess Leia to Andrew Breitbart's Jabba the Hutt -- Hannah Giles -- using all sorts of flowery metaphors and generally ostentatious vocabulary in the pursuit of the most mundane of tasks. Or maybe a fake ad for the "Hannah Giles School of Creative Writing," which would ostensibly offer to teach the neophyte the kind of poetic mastery of the English language that Hannah makes seem so effortless.

But it was Simon Owens over at Bloggasm who made me realize that you really can't beat up on Hannah Giles and feel good about it. She's just a dumb kid who got in way over her head. Yeah, she played an all-too-willing role in pretend provocateur James O'Keefe's ridiculous "take down" of ACORN -- a toothless non-profit that could barely afford to keep its fucking lights on, much less act as some sort of left-wing mafia enforcer; and sure, she really seemed to enjoy riding the wave and bathing in all the warm encomia from the right that followed her and Jimmy's little sting. But in the end, what the conservative media did to her was, ironically, what you'd expect to see done to the character she played in the now famous videos. They used her -- like a prostitute. Everybody did, to some extent.

So no, I'm not gonna pile on. That said, she does at least deserve to have the piece she penned for Breitbart's Big Journalism site regarding the dismantling of ACORN as a national organization -- her humorously florid pep talk to Right America about the need to keep fighting the good fight -- circulated far and wide. It's, well -- colorful.

Here's a chunk of it:

"Let me tell you something: If you know what is right, if you know what is pure, and if you can but for a second imagine attaining and sharing those things, then you must will all your power seek it out. If you do not, then the memory of that moment you imagined will forever itch inside your head and ache inside your heart until you are ruled by fear and tormented by regret...

We live in a quick cruel world that demands we bolt out of dreamland and wipe nostalgia’s sweet kisses away. Principles and beliefs are ageless only so long as those who possess them see to it they are not forgotten. Societies will always tend towards all things bad if the powers-at-be do not lead wisely and are not held accountable by the people.

The future is a blank canvas, a giant glowing question mark held in place by eternity. This is something that would send most people into a tailspin of wonder ,anxiety and fear. But to others, this makes life a bit simpler, an unknown future ought allow us to fully operate and thoroughly enjoy the present moment.

Challenge: take a step back and look at life on the Grand Scale. We are but specks of dust, here today gone tomorrow. What kind of spec are you going to be: The kind that gets swept under the rug? Or the mote that flies into the eye of deceit, threatening to agitate it beyond repair and forcing it to submit to truths brutally thorough cleansings?"

So, yeah. See, here I am -- not piling on at all.

Incidentally, the responses to the piece in the comment section are what you might expect:

"This lady can write. This has to be some of the most profoundly stirring prose I've read in some time."

-- impeach them all

"Great writing Hannah! You are truly an inspiration to me! I'll do what I can to be that "fly in the eye of deceit" from this end. I know you'll hold up yours! God bless you. God bless James. I have every confidence that we will win this war against this President of 'God damn America' Barack Hussein Obama and his comrades who are trying to enact a coup d'etat on America. Darkness is always overcome by the light."

-- Once always a marine

And with that, I'm doing what anyone in my position would do -- taking my laptop outside and ceremonially setting it on fire. Just not sure I'll ever be able to reach the lofty standards set by Cormac Giles there, so I don't see why I should even bother anymore.

Wait, does that count as piling on?

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

In spite of my newly minted status as one of Andrew Breitbart's internet punching bags, I haven't bothered to go after him in the wake of the revelation that the James O'Keefe videos he publicly championed are largely horseshit. I guess I kind of figure that everyone else is doing the heavy lifting for me on this one and for whatever reason I just don't feel like joining in the pile-on (which isn't to say that Breitbart's glaring journalistic errors and willful misdirection don't warrant it).

For those who haven't been following the story, O'Keefe, his partner-in-crime Hannah Giles, and Breitbart are facing some very legitimate questions now that it's been revealed that O'Keefe never wore an outrageous pimp costume during his "sting" of ACORN offices late last year and in fact was dressed very conservatively and behaved very politely. What makes the distinction important is that it shoots a pretty large hole in one of the most effective accusations ostensibly conveyed by the video: that ACORN employees were so fucking stupid and gullible that they couldn't even see through O'Keefe's obviously phony get-up. The other problem this creates is a much more daunting one: Given that O'Keefe, Giles and, yes, Breitbart have spent months hyping the pimp costume angle to death, either out-and-out lying about its existence and efficacy or simply failing to correct anyone who reached the wrong conclusion -- which was pretty much everybody -- their credibility is now shot. Why should anybody believe anything they have to say about ACORN or anything else?

The latest twist comes in a video posted by Mike Stark over at Stark Reports which shows Breitbart seeming to throw O'Keefe under the bus by admitting that he had no idea what was on the ACORN videos when he began touting them as the bombshell they now apparently aren't.

Salon: Acorn Tape Fraud: Does Andrew Breitbart Care?/3.2.10

Not long after the scandal first broke, I posted a quickie piece that kind of took aim at the outrage and indignation over the ACORN scandal. My issue was never that it wasn't a story -- only that it wasn't as big a story as the right wanted it to be. Even at its absolute worst -- a worst that seems to be eroding day by day -- it was never more than a couple of people at an underfunded and strangely inconsequential non-profit being caught doing something very dumb and potentially illegal. The idea that ACORN was somehow symbolic of grand scale tyranny and corruption on the left is laughable. ACORN, a group whose taxpayer subsidy was a drop in the proverbial bucket, was basically put in place to help underprivileged communities and was having trouble doing even that. In other words, it was always a small potatoes target to go after.

I can't help but wonder if Breitbart still thinks it was worth all the trouble it's brought him. Of course, as I've said quite a bit lately, the people who live and die by Breitbart's site -- and Fox News and talk radio, for that matter -- probably won't be swayed by contradictory facts anyway.

What's interesting about rereading the following piece is that the same media once accused by the right of not picking up the ACORN sting story when it was first breaking are now accused by the other side of not correcting and retracting the false claim that O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp.

"Nutcrackers" (Originally Posted, 9.17.09)

Let's just address something and get it out of the way. The ACORN story, while worth reporting, isn't anywhere near the "bombshell" Fox News is portraying it to be. Not even close. And there certainly isn't some nefarious far-reaching plot to cover it up by America's reputable news organizations.

First, on the "controversy" itself: It's largely overblown; the latest in a seemingly neverending cavalcade of right-wing conspiracy theories created and perpetuated in the hope of making some legitimate scandal stick to Barack Obama and the supposed liberal agenda in general. Yes, a few people in a very large group were charged with voter fraud during the 2008 campaign and were promptly fired. And absolutely, two conservative activists -- kids now being unsurprisingly hailed as folk heroes on the right -- posed as a pimp and prostitute and proved on tape that they could game the system by getting a few dumb-ass ACORN employees to suggest they hide their illicit income from the federal government. Is this illegal? Sure is. But even if you understand and accept that fact, what is this whole "scandal" really about? Supposedly, at least according to Glenn Beck and his myrmidons, it's about ACORN getting money from the government to push a so-called "liberal agenda" while ripping off the taxpayers. Well, let's see -- the "liberal agenda" part of the argument comes from the fact that ACORN exists solely to help the poor, which of course makes it evil and Un-American; the tax cheat part, meanwhile, hinges on ACORN having received $53 million in federal money since 1994. While this sounds like a small fortune, keep in mind that during the last eight years, $170 billion worth of pork projects were added to various pieces of legislation by some of the very Republican lawmakers now hypocritically feigning righteous indignation over the minimal slice of the pie ACORN's gotten. Does this make what ACORN's employees did right or mean that the organization shouldn't be held accountable for its actions? No, not at all -- but it helps to put the horseshit outrage into perspective.

Speaking of which, second, the big debate over the mainstream media's coverage of the ACORN story: I posted this earlier this morning in a comment, but it's worth getting into here. There's no doubt that one of the unfortunate truths about most news organizations is that they have a kind of group-think filter that will occasionally blind them to stories. I've seen all kinds of items slip through the cracks when a room full of journalists should've caught something (yet no one did). That's certainly at play here. But there's something else that needs to be kept in mind. Fox News has been on such a single-minded crusade to bring down Barack Obama (and anyone who argues with this really needs to have his or her head checked) that in theory it's worked against them, in the sense that other news outlets look at what Fox is doing -- what they're harping on and running into the ground -- and just figure it's more of the same from them. That it's not something any reputable organization would want to lend credibility to. I say "in theory" because the reality is that Glenn Beck's complaints about the "mainstream media" are thoroughly dishonest anyway. He doesn't really want the rest of the media going after Obama because then he loses the very personally profitable ability to point out as much to his legion of angry followers.

The problem, though, is as simple as the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Beck and his ilk have dragged out one insane conspiracy after another to the point where, to anyone with a brain, it's become little more than a constant drone. Nothing stands out. If Beck and Fox hit on a genuine argument, who the hell can hear it?

Cesca makes another decent point on this, one that doesn't absolve the press for neglecting the ACORN story but once again helps to put things in perspective. Fox News, for all its bitching and moaning about how the thieves and degenerates at ACORN are swindling average, ahem, employed Americans out of their voice and their hard earned cash, has been the biggest singular cheerleader for the very rich, very greedy, very white robber barons who've giddily high-fived each other while gang-banging the global economy and every single U.S. citizen -- to the tune of billions and billions of dollars -- in the process. I guess that that brand of greed is more "American" and therefore okay.

Keep something in mind: I've always believed that the press needs to keep an adversarial relationship with the White House. It's their job. But here's the thing: adversarial, yes -- but not unfairly so. George W. Bush was given more leeway and was overtly pandered to by the media more than any president in my lifetime. It was only after reality started becoming too grotesque to ignore that much of the press turned on him. In other words, Bush did something to garner his bad publicity. Fox and right-wing talk radio made a political and business decision immediately after the election of Barack Obama that they were going to represent the at-all-costs opposition. Hence, they've fomented a litany of complaints against Obama for no reason other than the fact that they fundamentally disagree with his politics. (Consider Beck ranting about "Oligarhies" and communist art, Limbaugh race-baiting under the guise of attacking "Obama's America," and crazed Birthers and Deathers marching through Washington, DC chanting about how the U.S. has "more Czars than the USSR" -- when that's true only because The USSR didn't have any fucking Czars.)

Can you understand why any news department with a reputation it values wouldn't want to be associated with that kind of lunacy in any way?

Yes, ACORN's a story. No, it's not a smoking gun -- against Obama or the media.

Suit To Nuts

What I want to know is, who the hell would've believed this frat douchebag's getup? His entire look -- and hers as well -- screams what a silver spoon-fed white college kid thinks a "pimp and ho" look like.

The Village Voice: Sting Trick 2: The Wrath of ACORN/9.24.09

Nutcrackers

Let's just address something and get it out of the way. The ACORN story, while worth reporting, isn't anywhere near the "bombshell" Fox News is portraying it to be. Not even close. And there certainly isn't some nefarious far-reaching plot to cover it up by America's reputable news organizations.

First, on the "controversy" itself: It's largely overblown; the latest in a seemingly neverending cavalcade of right-wing conspiracy theories created and perpetuated in the hope of making some legitimate scandal stick to Barack Obama and the supposed liberal agenda in general. Yes, a few people in a very large group were charged with voter fraud during the 2008 campaign and were promptly fired. And absolutely, two conservative activists -- kids now being unsurprisingly hailed as folk heroes on the right -- posed as a pimp and prostitute and proved on tape that they could game the system by getting a few dumb-ass ACORN employees to suggest they hide their illicit income from the federal government. Is this illegal? Sure is. But even if you understand and accept that fact, what is this whole "scandal" really about? Supposedly, at least according to Glenn Beck and his myrmidons, it's about ACORN getting money from the government to push a so-called "liberal agenda" while ripping off the taxpayers. Well, let's see -- the "liberal agenda" part of the argument comes from the fact that ACORN exists solely to help the poor, which of course makes it evil and Un-American; the tax cheat part, meanwhile, hinges on ACORN having received $53 million in federal money since 1994. While this sounds like a small fortune, keep in mind that during the last eight years, $170 billion worth of pork projects were added to various pieces of legislation by some of the very Republican lawmakers now hypocritically feigning righteous indignation over the minimal slice of the pie ACORN's gotten. Does this make what ACORN's employees did right or mean that the organization shouldn't be held accountable for its actions? No, not at all -- but it helps to put the horseshit outrage into perspective.

Speaking of which, second, the big debate over the mainstream media's coverage of the ACORN story: I posted this earlier this morning in a comment, but it's worth getting into here. There's no doubt that one of the unfortunate truths about most news organizations is that they have a kind of group-think filter that will occasionally blind them to stories. I've seen all kinds of items slip through the cracks when a room full of journalists should've caught something (yet no one did). That's certainly at play here. But there's something else that needs to be kept in mind. Fox News has been on such a single-minded crusade to bring down Barack Obama (and anyone who argues with this really needs to have his or her head checked) that in theory it's worked against them, in the sense that other news outlets look at what Fox is doing -- what they're harping on and running into the ground -- and just figure it's more of the same from them. That it's not something any reputable organization would want to lend credibility to. I say "in theory" because the reality is that Glenn Beck's complaints about the "mainstream media" are thoroughly dishonest anyway. He doesn't really want the rest of the media going after Obama because then he loses the very personally profitable ability to point out as much to his legion of angry followers.

The problem though is as simple as the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Beck and his ilk have dragged out one insane conspiracy after another to the point where, to anyone with a brain, it's become little more than a constant drone. Nothing stands out. If Beck and Fox hit on a genuine argument, who the hell can hear it?

Cesca makes another decent point on this, one that doesn't absolve the press for neglecting the ACORN story but once again helps to put things in perspective. Fox News, for all its bitching and moaning about how the thieves and degenerates at ACORN are swindling average, ahem, employed Americans out of their voice and their hard earned cash, has been the biggest singular cheerleader for the very rich, very greedy, very white robber barons who've giddily high-fived each other while gang-banging the global economy and every single U.S. citizen -- to the tune of billions and billions of dollars -- in the process. I guess that that brand of greed is more "American" and therefore okay.

Keep something in mind: I've always believed that the press needs to keep an adversarial relationship with the White House. It's their job. But here's the thing: adversarial, yes -- but not unfairly so. George W. Bush was given more leeway and was overtly pandered to by the media more than any president in my lifetime. It was only after reality started becoming too grotesque to ignore that much of the press turned on him. In other words, Bush did something to garner his bad publicity. Fox and right-wing talk radio made a political and business decision immediately after the election of Barack Obama that they were going to represent the at-all-costs opposition. Hence, they've fomented a litany of complaints against Obama for no reason other than the fact that they fundamentally disagree with his politics. (Consider Beck ranting about "Oligarhies" and communist art, Limbaugh race-baiting under the guise of attacking "Obama's America," and crazed Birthers and Deathers marching through Washington, DC chanting about how the U.S. has "more Czars than the USSR" -- when that's true only because The USSR didn't have any fucking Czars.)

Can you understand why any news department with a reputation it values wouldn't want to be associated with that kind of lunacy in any way?

Yes, ACORN's a story. No, it's not a smoking gun -- against Obama or the media.