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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (6008)	12/2/2005 12:14:41 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542163

I really like that article. I posted it on FADG.

To: Rambi who wrote (6008)	12/2/2005 12:40:09 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542163

One way to recognize a willfully stupid person is to examine the role hyperbole plays in their rhetoric. Take, for example, those who, like Pulitzer-nominated author Stephen Pizzo, say that “George Bush is the worst president of the United States of America, ever. Hands down.” Whenever I encounter such people I walk the other way for fear that such stupidity might be contagious. For anyone to make such a claim would require a basic understanding of Presidential history, an objective standard for comparing other Presidents to George W, and an ability to make nuanced judgments. In other words, it requires the very skill set that would generally prevent a person from making such an inane claim in the first place. There has only been 43 presidents of the United States. You have to be able to say that one is better than another without having to prove it mathematically. I mean where would we be if we couldn't say that Ted Williams was the greatest hitter in Baseball history. Beside there being thousands of baseball players in the major leagues, what about all the people that played baseball but decided to do something else full time? What about the impact of air travel and night baseball that effect baseball players hitting ability? What about steroid use? I mean based on that thought, people are too stupid to have any kind of opinion that is not based on mathematical certainty, What trash.

To: Rambi who wrote (6008)	12/2/2005 12:51:55 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 542163

I saw a comment on one of the blogs this morning that I'm saving for future use. If you can ignore the grammar, it's apt. "My sides right, your side is wrong. Even if their are saying the same thing."

To: Rambi who wrote (6008)	12/2/2005 1:27:14 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542163

Oh, dear. Well, given that I've been perfectly sanguine about claiming that Jimmy Carter is the Worst.President.Ever. -- I can't object to people who feel that way about Bush. I mean, does it really depend which president you think is the best or the worst? That's a value judgment, nothing necessarily irrational about value judgments, just because we may disagree. Unless you don't think it's possible for one of the 43 to have been the best and another to have been the worst, at least in the eyes of any given beholder, which seems like a strange claim to me. At any rate, I like hyperbole. I like metaphors, even strained ones. Being a good listener means being willing to work with the speaker, give her your ear and go part of the way on your own. So -- is it so awful to suggest that abortion, as a political choice, has caused something equivalent to a holocaust? What is a holocaust, anyway? Extensive loss of life, especially by fire. Ok, so abortion doesn't involve fire, but each abortion, ipso facto, involves loss of life, and millions of abortions seems like tremendous loss of life to me. I could also say, well, domestic cats have caused a holocaust of wild songbirds. And American diet has caused a holocaust of fat people who dug their own graves with their teeth, to use another metaphor. It's a tad overwrought, probably would benefit from the editor's pencil, but there aren't any editors on the Internet. We have our own mental Manuals of Style. I don't like mean people, and prefer to avoid stupid people and people who can't think above the level of a cliche, but purple prose isn't necessarily a sin in my book, if the person is funny or otherwise interesting.

To: Rambi who wrote (6008)	12/2/2005 2:13:55 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542163

Hands down.” Whenever I encounter such people I walk the other way for fear that such stupidity might be contagious. The article you posted is guilty of exactly the same rhetorical transgressions that it purports to critisize. The Bush administration has reason to worry that they will be classified by historians as the worst administration in the history of the country. Other administrations have had fiscal mismanagement or unsusessful wars or ethical lapses, but seldom or never all at once. This excessive rhetoric of calling the examination of that ranking stupid is just an attempt to pull that debate off the table. The question is neither far fetched or stupid. This is exactly the same kind of tactic as saying that those who doubted WMDs were unpatriotic or those don't support the death penalty want criminals to roam the streets. What makes this particular incarnation of the argument so transparent is that the refutation of it's own logic takes up the bulk of the article. One might almost be tempted to think the author was trying to use irony to make a point, except it doesn't really read that way. It reads like hypocrasy instead. TP