Friday, February 25, 2011

But The Bell Rang!

Last week I talked about the broad "birther" brush -- that even people who might wonder why, say, even when Democratic Hawaii Goveronor Abercrombie tried to get to Obama's original birth records to put the whole controversy to rest in Obama's favor ... a month later he threw up his hands and said it's impossible -- but in the small print ... without Obama's permission.

And the fact that anybody who dares to scratch his head over this and say, "Really???" would be reluctant to do so for fear of that big, broad brush sweeping over him and saying "Birther! Nut job!" just for wondering ... what's the big deal?  Why the reluctance for Obama to have them waved in front of the public to embarrass the birthers?

If this were a republican there would be a hoard of reporters camping out at the HDOH, sifting through garbage and going undercover, and it would be on the nightly news every night.  But it's their guy, and the liberals in the news media get curiously incurious when it's their guy's butt on the line.

It touched off one of the longest comment chains ever on this blog, mostly between myself and someone to whom it seemed at least as important that, in fact, its because the law has everyone's hands (including Obama's).  So you really shouldn't ask the question.  It's outta their hands.  Shut Up.

He so far has provided one bit of evidence ... but it doesn't stand up to cursory scrutiny.

I think this should be our new term for such arguments.  It's the, "But ... the Bell Rang!" argument.

3 comments:

Severian said...

Ever notice how many of the left's "facts" work like that?

That is, they're true in one very narrow, super-specific sense, but completely specious for any argument of real-world significance. For instance, the contention that "oil companies made record profits!!1!11!!eleventy!!11!!" in the first year of the Iraq War. Any rational person's response to this, if he examined the facts for about thirty seconds, would be something like: "yes, that's true -- oil companies did sell more gallons of gas, in the aggregate, this year than last. And, you know, all things being equal, if you sell more units of something than you did last year, you make more money than you did last year. DVD players, you'll notice, work the same way... and so by your 'logic,' Gulf War II was also a 'war for Best Buy.' You'll also notice that Code Pink received a lot more contributions this year than last. Does that make it a 'War for Code Pink'? If not, why not? Please explain using the exact same logic you used vis a vis Halliburton's balance sheet (which, of course, I'm sure you so totally understand, what with your extensive business background)."

Etc. etc.

I think logicians used to call this kind of thing a "category error." But then again, "logic" is just a white male heteronormative patriarchal hegemonic socially constructed something or other....

philmon said...

Heh.

Plus, of course, many of my mushy minded friends were all over the "see how gas prices have sky-rocketed? This is just 'more proof' [oh, how I hate that phrase] that Bush is just president so his oil buddies can make bigger profits. Halluburton!" (yeah, what is that whole Halliburton thing? I think it's some sort of tick they have).

Anyway, gas prices are shooting up again, but you don't hear any of the same people saying "It's just Obama helping his Oil Buddies out!"

Severian said...

Yep. There's leftist theodicy in a nutshell: when bad things happen to good people, they just kinda happen. When bad things happen to everyone else, it's Bush's fault.