<div dir="ltr">Okay I lied again. One _last_ post, sorry. I had "straw men" on my mind apparently. Leo's current sin involving Paris is more a hasty generalization.<br><br>Jeffrey.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 1:12 AM, Jeffrey Watts <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jeffrey.w.watts@gmail.com">jeffrey.w.watts@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div dir="ltr"><br>His Paris Hilton argument is a classic straw man. He uses her because most people despise her, and takes a trivial relationship between otherwise extremely dissimilar things and blows it up into a side-by-side comparison. It's the same silly thing you see on McCain's "celebrity" adverts. In this case, Paris Hilton is known primarily for her sex tape, her name, her lack of shame, and her overexposure. Her criminal problems were just icing on the cake and fodder for the gossip-mill. What's "wrong with her" is not her disregard for the law - her problems are much much deeper than that. Thus comparing her with a complex issue involving MILLIONS of people is flimsy. If he weren't trying to use a straw man he wouldn't have selected such an incendiary subject for his analogy. As I said, he's not stupid.<br>
</div></blockquote></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><br>"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine<br>
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