There are few topics I have vowed to flag every time they raise their ugly metaphorical heads. The fake statistic about women earning only “76 cents” for every dollar a man earns for the same job. The implication that lawyers are endorsing the conduct or character of their clients. The lie that Al Gore won the 2000 election but that the Supreme Court “handed” the Presidency to George Bush. “Hands up, don’t shoot!” More recently, I have resolved to not let media hacks get away with the statement that the claim that the 2020 election was “rigged” is “baseless.” The rampant misuse of the term “ad hominem” is another one.
The annoying issue came up again in the exchange with an EA reader I referenced in this post (#7). He accused me of being a “phony ethicist” because I criticized Clarence Thomas’s flagrant breach of ethics in his accepting (and not disclosing) copious gifts and financial benefits from a well-known conservative billionaire, and yet, he claimed, didn’t criticize Present Biden’s complicity in the profitable influence peddling of his ne’re-do-well son. Of course, I have done the latter, multiple times, and in response to my tart message back that he didn’t know what he was talking about and couldn’t tell an ethic from a writing desk, he shifted his argument to saying I was a “fake ethicist” because I never wrote about Justice Sotomayor’s failure to recuse herself in Greenspan v. Random House.
I didn’t recall whether I had commented on that case or not (the complainer didn’t know either), but it didn’t matter. I resent being told that I am neglecting my mission because I didn’t write about what some reader wanted me to write about. My two standard answers to that complaint are 1) “Start your own damn blog!” and 2) “Bite me.” As I explained in my response,
“The blog is not a political blog or even a legal ethics blog. It’s a pan-ethics blog; I make no money from it, and I spend about 4 hours every day, 7 days a week working on it as a public service. It covers ethical issues wherever they turn up. I can’t possibly cover every issue I’d like to discuss or even should cover. When I’m traveling, or have deadlines, or personal matters, any legitimate ethics issue may miss being written, and I don’t apologize for that. Anyone who knocks me for not writing what they think is more important than what I do cover is just being a jerk.”
I stand by diagnosis. However, the jerk responded that I had resorted to an “ad hominem” attack, thereby confirming my conclusions, relayed to him, that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and also that he is indeed a jerk.
As I wrote in the an early EA post on this topic (not the first) eleven years ago,
We get a lot of accusations here—aimed at me and also between warring commenters—of using ad hominem attacks. Ad hominem attacks are indeed unethical, not because of the negative descriptions of the target they involve, which may well be accurate and fair, but because they are a dishonest and unfair debate tactic. The motive behind a true ad hominem attack is to avoid dealing with the substance of what an adversary claims, argues or asserts by attacking the person, character or background of the adversary. The intention is to avoid the implications of a fact or illuminating opinion by asserting: “This person is bad, so don’t listen to what he has to say.” It is a logical fallacy, of course. Whether an individual is bad or not doesn’t change the facts; a bad person may have performed a brilliant analysis, uncovered the wisdom of the ages, or uncovered the key perception that solves enduring mysteries. It is unethical for one seeking to rebut the argument to attack the arguer as if it’s the same thing. When successful, ad hominem attacks deflect the real debate and turn it into a debate about something else, focusing on the original speaker, now feeling the need to defend his honor rather than his position.
Insulting someone while fairly rebutting his argument may be uncivil, which is unethical too, but it is a lesser ethics offense: it is not intended to deceive. “Your argument is based on lies and rationalizations, as I explain below, and you are a fat, smelly turd” is uncivil, but the argument is being rebutted on its own terms. It is not ad hominem. “Your argument is infantile and fails to take into consideration material facts that I list below, you sneaky bastard!” is also uncivil, as the insult is gratuitous, but at least the vulgarity is related to the described offense, making it diagnostic, and thus better than the mere name-calling in the first example. It is also not an ad hominem attack. The argument isn’t being discounted because of the arguer; the arguer is being discounted because of the argument. I plead guilty to committing this debatable ethical breach on occasion.
There. Pledge fulfilled.
As an aside, I believe that no public figure has been subjected to true ad hominem attacks more frequently than Donald Trump, though the late Rush Limbaugh is a strong second.
Ethics Alarms 
I dunno, I still see people in my FB talking about “Killary Klinton” and she sure endured a lot of ad hominem attacks over the years. It would be tough to measure and determine who was the loser/winner! Still, well done on standing up against (and defining) ad hominem attacks.
Oh, she’s in the top ten, Jerry, no doubt about it. Also Nancy Pelosi, whom prominent conservative pundits like to call “Granny Wine-box.” Rush, however, was almost reflexively attacked based on his weight (as if appearance matters at all for a radio personality), and a U.S.Senator was even elected in part on the success of his book, “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, and Other Observations.” I think that’s pretty strong support for Rush’s ranking.
Her Thighness?
Nancy Bug Eyes?
Yeah, those.
I read that book, and I wouldn’t judge it by its cover/title. He takes on the substance of Rush at several key points, and nails him to the wall. For example, Rush said “Name one thing Government did well. ONE THING. ” He argues, as so many lazy thinkers on the right do, that government can never do anything right, market uber alles. Franken goes around to reputable conservative thinkers, George Will, etc. and comes up with an impressive list of things that government did well. Moon landing. Federal Highway system. Many others. He also points out logical fallacies and vicious attacks that Rush trafficked in. Yes, the “fat” part is an ad hominem attack, but much of the book was substantive.
But…90% of those aware of the book ONLY saw the title.
Also–Rush attacked Chelsea Clinton for HER LOOKS. A young teenager, at the height of her awkward years. As the new WH dog.
He made fun of Vince Foster after his suicide. Imagine being one of his family hearing that?
The things he said about Hillary could fill an entire book (several). Many of the attacks were on her looks, and others were just lies and speculation.
He said Obama had made it ok to beat up white kids, stoking racist tensions with falsehoods.
He called feminists “femiNazis”–if that’s not an ad hominem, I don’t know what is.
He called a woman a slut for supporting birth control provision. birth control provision by government may be a bad idea. Its proponents are not SLUTS.
Sometimes, when you engage in vile vituperative vicious attacks, you might get some blowback.
So…um…cry me a river about Rush Limbaugh being the target of unfair attacks?
Really easy ethical principles here: Two wrongs don’t make a right, and Tit for Tat is not ethical. Unfair is still unfair.
Over all those years, it’s easy to to select Rush’s worst excesses. I flagged many of them myself. I wasn’t a Rush fan, but a Rush appreciator: what he did he did extraordinarily well, and the fact that his free-association act resulted in bad moments doesn’t blot out his often gutsy and illuminating analysis: the most vociferous critics of Rush, in my experience, never actually listened to him for even one full show or a substantial portion of one. (Did you? Just curious).
“femiNazis” is not ad hominem. Rush based that extremely effective (if unfair) term on the doctrinaire rhetoric and bullying tactics used by activists. Suck labels only work if there is enough intrinsic truth in them to sting. (Hence “Didn’t Eran It” for DEI is deadly.)
As for the slut bit: Rush, who knew how to get attention, was framing Sandra Fluke’s demand as “women who want to have prolific non-committal sex with multiple sex partners demanding taxpayers fund their promiscuity.” That makes “slut” a diagnosis, not ad hominem. Inflammatory, guaranteed to trigger the other side, but still not ad hominem..
And Sandra Fluke, whose vibes were infuriatingly self-righteous, was a perfect target.
If it is not ad hominem to call a woman who enters the public arena a slut based on her position on birth control, then the word has no meaning.
I listened to a LOT of Rush, via my mother. Mostly the early years of his time on WMAL.
If labeling someone a NAZI because of non-Nazi positions that one disagrees with isn’t ad hominem, then the word has no meaning. Feminism, even at its most extreme, has never become Nazism. I tend to disagree with most radical feminists. I don’t think they merit the insult Nazi. It’s a content free attack. You know, an Ad Hominem.
Defending Rush at his worst isn’t a good look. I agree that there was MORE to him than these things. But he was willing to practice the politics of personal destruction in order to gain fame. To gain money. And it worked. The Chelsea Clinton thing was not some spontaneous gag. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. It was on his TV show, it was planned, with her picture. You don’t go after children like that. You just don’t. And you don’t pretend that Obama’s election had something to do with some white kids allegedly getting beat up by some black kids on a school bus somewhere. You don’t do that because it’s irresponsible race baiting.
And I did all that off the top of my head. If I really wanted to go through the reams of transcripts of his years of shows, his books, his articles, I could find endless examples of his inhumanity, his viciousness, his often ridiculous and afactual claims…but I don’t feel like spending the day covered in raw sewage.
If it is not ad hominem to call a woman who enters the public arena a slut based on her position on birth control, then the word has no meaning.
But you’re framing the situation as much as Rush was. His characterization was based on his framing that “Here is a woman who wants tax-payers to pay for her wild sex life.” Her position, in Rush’s framing, wasn’t wrong because she was a slut. She was a slut, in his analysis, because of the position that taxpayers should underwrite her hedonistic life style. You don’t have to concur with that framing, but with that framing, it’s not ad hominem.
I’m not defending Rush at his worst: the Chelsea insult was unconscionable (but funny). I’m defending all entertainers who walk such high wires without a net, and they deserve a margin of error as well as understanding when they fall. (See: The Greaseman; Imus) Rush was a satirist above all, and was part of the critical cultural breakthrough that de-bunked the media’s already stultifying worship of the ideological Left. That, more than his admittedly many excesses and missteps, is why he was hated.
It wasn’t funny AND it was cruel. But humor is subjective.
Again, I’m going to challenge the way you are defending the slut comment. SLUT is a pejorative term for a woman who has many sex partners. It has nothing to do with whether you ask someone to subsidize that or not. And a woman can be on birth control and have ONE partner, right? I’ve had several monogamous girlfriends on birth control. Were they SLUTS? So why would you leap to the conclusion that a person advocating for some provision of birth control is a SLUT?
I don’t understand the logic. Occam’s Razor would suggest that you have a guy who has said horrible things about women, over and over throughout his career, saw an articulate young woman advocate a policy publicly, and he decided to attack her viciously and personally.
Talk to women you know who enter the public sphere, whether conservative or liberal. This type of sexualized attack is what happens. It’s wrong, and pretending that Rush was making some policy point by saying SLUT is factually wrong.
But Jerry, the topic was sex, and Fluke was making what could be fairly called a self-0interested policy proposal.
Rush said horrible things about women and lots of other groups: that doesn’t change the meaning of what he was saying about Fluke’s argument, which was related to one of the common arguments against federally funded abortions: don’t make me pay for the consequences of your irresponsible sex life. “SLUT is a pejorative term for a woman who has many sex partners. It has nothing to do with whether you ask someone to subsidize that or not.” Well, sure it has something to do with that, and a birth control advocate who engages in a lot of irresponsible sex is going to benefit from federal underwriting more that someone who doesn’t. Yes, it was a cheap shot using the word to describe Fluke, nonetheless, the description was entirely based on her position. Let’s say Rush had evidence that she was a slut, and argued against her position based on that rather than the “why should we have to pay…” argument. Then he would be using ad hominem. On the other hand, the argument, “Only a slut would argue that everyone else should pay to protect her from her own promiscuous sexual conduct” may be wrong and may be unfair and maybe below the belt, but still, the insult is diagnostic.
“Only a slut would argue that everyone else should pay to protect her from her own promiscuous sexual conduct” may be wrong and may be unfair and maybe below the belt, but still, the insult is diagnostic.”
So it was wrong, and unfair and maybe below the belt, but not an ad hominem because…birth control has something to do with sex, and free birth control would benefit a promiscuous person MORE than someone with one sex partner? Even THAT is flawed logic. Take woman 1 with a single sex partner, and woman 2 with 5. They each need birth control that costs $20 a month. How does 2 benefit more than 1?
It was just a cruel ad hominem. We all make mistakes. Good people own up to them.
“Take woman 1 with a single sex partner, and woman 2 with 5. They each need birth control that costs $20 a month. How does 2 benefit more than 1?” The insult presumes that 2 has more sex than one. Unwarranted presumption, perhaps, but an easy leap to make. Rush’s characterization was wrong because it was uncivil, a cheap shot, ugly, personal and unfair, and for that reason he should have recanted and apologized. But it still wasn’t ad hominem.
(I seem to remember his apologizing for the Chelsea “ugly stick” line—which also wasn’t ad hominem, just cruel—, but I may be be thinking of David Letterman apologizing for mocking Sarah Palin’s youngest a daughter.)
My recollection is that Rush didn’t apologize, he lied about the joke.
Goddamn, it is impossible to get you to admit a simple mistake. Writing four hours a day, quickly, would naturally lead someone to do that. I make six mistakes before noon. You’re just wrong–SLUT is about promiscuity, and nothing about advocating for free birth control implies promiscuity at all. Some advocates for it may be celibate, and merely believe it is necessary for others.
Watching this exchange, I’ve had to consider a couple of things. First, I never listened to Rush, so I don’t know how his monologue progressed. But I would have to agree that throwing out the term “slut” would poison the well. Compare the following statements:
“This slut is advocating for government-provided birth control.”
“Married couples are advocating for government-provided birth control.”
“Some Catholic nuns are advocating for government-provided birth control.”
The use of the cognitive dissonance scale would dictate that the word slut, which most people look upon in the negative, would drag down the perception of government-provided birth control by association. Married couples and nuns, on the other hand, would raise up the perception of government-provided birth control, because those two groups are (usually) viewed favorably. I would even propose that we would tend to discount the arguments of a slut, but more gravely consider the arguments of married couples and nuns.
If Rush was arguing against government-provided birth control, and said, “And here we have this slut who is pushing for it,” without any more substantive to say, I think that would rightly be called an ad hominem. If on the other hand he was arguing she was a slut because of her advocacy, then I wouldn’t say that’s ad hominem, just a logical fallacy.
If on a third hand, Rush was saying “sluts like her would benefit from government-provided birth control,” I would say there are aspects of this which fall into the ad hominem category, but the usage makes that very borderline. If he had been more clinical, and said “government-provided birth control will subsidize promiscuous behavior”, that I would say that argument is definitely not ad hominem. (And it doesn’t matter if it would also benefit monogamous relationships or even women who are not sexually active but are trying to regulate their periods. It would subsidize promiscuous behavior. The analysis would then have to decide if the increased promiscuous behavior is more than offset by the proposed benefits.) Arguing against a position because the wrong people would benefit is not in and of itself ad hominem, especially if you can make a strong case that the benefit to the “wrong” people is something that justifiably needs prevention. To make up an example, making alcohol free to homeless alcoholics would have negligible benefits to anyone else, and would be a major benefit to the alcoholics, and I assume we all want to see alcoholics in control of themselves, not wasting away on government-provided alcohol. Good thing no one would ever do that, right?
So it turns on whether the use of the word slut discounts the argument by attacking the person. To a degree, I would state that using the term poisons the well, because in the realm of disagreement about whether or not it is a good thing to be promiscuous, an undecided observer might be swayed simply from the use of the pejorative. From the standpoint that saying “slut” and saying “a promiscuous person” describes the same thing, then there could be a case that this is not ad hominem, just a matter of stating the facts.
From my view, the use of the term “slut” has no constructive basis in honest argumentation. It is derogatory and insulting, and is intended to shame and push people away. No, I don’t condone promiscuity. No, I don’t condone birth control at all. But if I’m going to have an earnest conversation with people, and if I’m going to try to get people who disagree with me to consider what I’m saying, the worst thing I can do is immediately put them on the defensive, rile them up, and put them down. So I think I have to side on the ad hominem, by a whisker, because of how it places a thumb on the cognitive dissonance scale.
This is incredibly erudite and immensely fair. Thanks.
I started out trying to show how the use of “slut” missed the mark of ad hominem, but the more I considered it, the less I found myself able to fully defend my original position. I feel a bit sheepish about that…
That’s our Ryan!
Incidentally, Rush did apologize to Fluke for his “choice of words.” She refused to accept his apology. To be fair, the apology ranks low on the EA Apology Scale.
Great analysis. No doubt that it poisons the well, but you leave out the fact that Rush was primarily an entertainer/satirist with a political agenda, essentially like Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher but from the other side.
(Maher, as I have mentioned many times and will continue to until he has a stroke or something, called both Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann as “cunts” and “twats” while his audience of enablers hooted. It was OK, see, because, HBO reasoned, it was all in fun. Those words were definitely used by Maher as ad hominem insults…but then that’s what comics do, right? Especially the leas clever ones.
Ad hominem: “Fallacious argumentative strategy that avoids genuine discussion of the topic by instead attacking the character, motive etc. of the person associated with the argument”
If you don’t think calling a woman a SLUT in response to her position on free provision on birth control, then HOW is calling someone a SLUT a response to the argument itself? As I’ve pointed out, people on BC can be monogamous. It’s me saying “I’m for drug legalization” and my opponent saying “Nice going, narco-terrorist cartel leader!” Even if an ad hominem is related to the topic, it’s still an ad hominem if it is a false insult that distracts from the arguments instead of addressing them.
It isn’t okay to call women sluts because you don’t like their positions. It’s a classic ad hominem attack. Everyone makes mistakes. Big people admit them.
Addendum: I’m surprised that you take umbrage at the “FemiNazi” line. Rush wasn’t literally saying the women he was referring to supported Hitler. It was exactly the same satiric joke as “Seinfeld” used in the “Soup Nazi” episode: “Nazi” meaning authoritarian, doctrinaire, obnoxious, intimidating bullies. Having had run-ins during that period and before with exactly the kind of militant feminists Rush was mocking, I knew immediately what he was talking about. If you’ve never had such encounters, I envy you.
I did not care for Rush’s characterization, but I got it.
Soup Nazi. Grammar Nazi. These are edgy uses but comic because the idea of someone being so fervent about soup or grammar is funny.
When you talk about political groups, and attach Nazi to them, it’s an ad hominem. Think about TrumpNazis. DemNazis. ChristNazis. It’s why the attack on the Ukraine regime as Nazis is so powerful by Russia. It strikes us as ridiculous–of course a reformist elected government led by a Jew can’t be Nazis….but the ad hominem works because of the power of the phrase.
Here’s what Rush himself said (quoted in the Guardian): “the term “feminazi”…originated in the 90s, with the shock-jock Rush Limbaugh …using it to describe, in his improbable phrasing, “a feminist to whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur”.
And here he gives the game away–he directly links what feminists do to what some on the Right consider to be the equivalent of the Nazi Holocaust.
So it’s not like SoupNazi or GrammarNazi, is it? Or was the Grammar Nazi seriously being accused of killing people with poor grammar?
And of course Rush’s own definition is wildly inaccurate. Feminists don’t seek to ensure a high number of abortions. They seek to ensure that abortion remains legal, safe, and accessible. Many work to provide birth control and sex education TO REDUCE UNWANTED PREGNANCIES and thus, abortions.
I’m surprised that an ethically minded person would spend so much time defending Limbaugh, who was as ugly a voice in American politics as I can think of. Farrakhan, but with a much bigger megaphone. Father Coughlin, but with a longer period of influence and more power in real politics. He never engaged in serious debate in his long career behind the microphone. Even when he had guests, it was all agreement. There was never a suggestion that politics was filled with hard dilemmas, nuances, complexity, gray areas, and times when his side was wrong. It was so much bile, certainty, misinformation and lies. The things he said, for YEARS about Vince Foster’s suicide are just disgusting. He passed around rumors as facts. What are the ethics about lying about a man’s suicide in a way that adds to his family’s suffering, to stain the reputation of an innocent woman, just because you don’t like her politics? I dunno, seems unethical to me. And to be clear–I’m not saying you are DEFENDING that–you clearly aren’t. But you are performing linguistic backflips in order to say he didn’t use ad hominem when he called Fluke a slut, and when he called an entire social movement NAZIs, even though they obviously weren’t sluts or Nazis.
The key is that unlike Coughlin and Farrakhan, Limbaugh was an entertainer first. You keep wanting to slide by that. He was Dave Chappelle on the radio. I was impressed that unlike virtually every other talk-show host, he was always polite and respectful to callers even when they disagreed with him. I’ll defend him against claims that he was racist (I never heard him say anything that could be fairly called racist). I’ll defend anyone against unfair allegations (like Trump’s saying that there will be a “bloodbath” if he is defeated, now stated as fact routinely by the Biden campaign.) That’s my job.
“Feminists don’t seek to ensure a high number of abortions. They seek to ensure that abortion remains legal, safe, and accessible. Many work to provide birth control and sex education TO REDUCE UNWANTED PREGNANCIES and thus, abortions.”
Whoa. This is dated in the extreme, if it ever was true. It would be time-consuming but easy to find copious activist screeds saying exactly that the more abortions, the better. Once upon a time, Bill Clinton’s agenda was to make abortions “safe, legal, and rare.” This was eventually revoked because “rare” implies, correctly, that there are serious ethical problems with abortions. Can’t concede that!
As I said, I wasn’t a Rush fan, but he was a talented pro, and his macro-achievement—focusing attention on the partisan distortions of reality that the MSM was reveling in even then, and giving conservatives a platform in the civic marketplace—outweighs his moments of cruelty, inaccuracy, unfairness, etc. He wasn’t a demagogue, like, say, Tucker Carlson.
Find me just ONE mainstream feminists arguing for MORE abortions. Just one. If it is as common as you say, shouldn’t take 23 seconds. You do make a good point on the RARE issue, though. I’m sure you’re right. They definitely don’t want anyone to think abortion is something to feel guilty or bad about.
Farrakhan began as a calypso singer so….we can forgive his anti-Semitism? Look, Limbaugh can’t skate by claiming entertainer AND be feted by Presidents and Congressional Leaders as the soul of the party, the most important voice, etc.
As for racism: He said, early in Obama’s presidency “In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.” He said it because a video appeared of a black kid beating up a white kid on a bus. That’s disgusting weaponizing of race, blaming a Black president for what a Black kid did. Making white people feel that Obama authorized this, caused it, and it also touches on one of the three pillars of anti-Black racism–that Blacks are prone to violence and criminality.
I do think that he was far more misogynistic than he was racist. If you look at the number of comments he made about Hillary’s butt size, or “Moochelle” Obama’s rear end, or about Hillary’s ankles…imagine being that overweight but still feeling entitled to attack two women for their body sizes.
1. He was absolutely a misogynist. I was amazed when he got married.
2. The argument is never as blunt as “we need more abortions” but rather the more nuanced approach of “No Bad Abortions” (“Narratives that portray abortion as a positive decision have been important for combating abortion sigma, challenging assumptions about abortion, humanising abortion seekers, and rejecting the idea that there is a simple binary of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ abortions.”) and Feminist agenda research papers like “The effect of abortion on having and achieving aspirational one-year plans.” The idea is that abortions are an unequivocal good, a benefit to the women who have them, and that the career aspirations that having abortions permit to be achieved are better choices than having children. EA has so many stories on the abortion tag that it too k a while to even find one on the exact topic, but here was actress Jameela Jamil told Gloria Steinem (as Gloria nodded with approval)
“I’m very outspoken about the fact that I, similarly to you, feel very passionately about a woman’s right to choose I’m someone who’s had an abortion, and I feel like I need to make sure that we prove it’s not always just emergencies. People have abortions, sometimes a woman just wants her liberty, and we have to normalize that it’s okay just to make that choice for yourself, because your life is as important as a newborn life that doesn’t even exist yet.” In other words, abortions are great because they represent liberty, and reaffirm a woman’s importance. And the unborn life doesn’t even exist, so nothing lost!
3. “In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.” First, that isn’t racist; I’m not even sure it’s unfair. Obama threw race relations back decades, with botches like his handling of the Trayvon Martin episode, personalizing it to him, the President. He was, though he hid it fairly well, effectively an acolyte of Reverend Wright, who was an anti-white bigot and an anti-American, black liberationist. Obama’s act was brilliant, but ultimately divisive and destructive. Rush’s contrarian position was, as his positions often were, hyperbolic, but an important ice water-in-the-face of the myth that Barack was unbiased and colorblind.
I could find plenty of men (and quite a few women) who think wearing fake fingernails is a characteristic of a slut.
“who is so concerned with funding their birth control must engage in a lot of sex, because the expense is negligible. Hence X engages in a lot of sex—slut”
I’m sorry…do you, like Rush did, think that women have to take more birth control pills the more sex they are having?
Because that…is not how that works.
In fact, aside from the name-calling, that misconception was part of why Rush’s comments were considered so offensive—here was a man with no idea of how birth control works or even the extent of what it’s used for, and his voice was given so much weight in a public debate with a woman who actually did no what she was talking about, and who was directly affected by it. And a whole side of the political aisle listened to him instead of her.
.”The designation is based on the argument, and designed to frame the argument.”
It was NOT based on her argument. He LIED about her argument. She argued that contraception should be covered to help women who use it to treat medical conditions and he pretended her argument was solely about sex. And now you are ignoring her argument while arguing that something can’t be an ad him if it’s based on a lie.
Oh, great, the fake definition of “lie” again. Framing an argument in ways those who make the argument don’t like isn’t “lying.” Opinions aren’t “lying.” Anyone could examine Fluke’s statements and evaluate for themselves whether Rush was fair, right, or full of it. There’s no deception there.
The more you write on this, the worse your case gets.
“Slut” is a “diagnostic,” but “fat” is not?
Anyway, we seem to have forgotten that the bulk of Fluke’s testimony was about women who needed birth control to treat serious medical conditions. So Rush either called her a slut for advocating that insurance cover treatment for polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis, or he was just lying when he claimed that she was demanding coverage for her “wild sex.”
But I guess the important thing is that this label did not meet the most technically pedantic possible meaning of “ad hominem,” and we must not slander his good name with such a term.
Slut” is a “diagnostic,” but “fat” is not?
Yeah, do better. “Slut” describes conduct, “fat” describes appearance.
And if you can’t argue straight, and resort to sarcasm to make up for weak arguments, you won’t last long here. “Technicalities” is a euphemism for “I don’t care about the rules, what matters is my feelings.”
Many would argue, though wrongly in many cases, that “fat” is a result of conduct, just as much as “slut” is. But both are subjective judgments meant to demean and discredit.
My main point was that Rush misrepresented Fluke’s argument to be about “sex” when in fact she was focused on women who needed contraceptives to treat medical conditions.
Let’s look back at your definition of ad hominem to see if Rush’s characterization of Fluke applies:
The motive behind a true ad hominem attack is to avoid dealing with the substance of what an adversary claims, argues or asserts by attacking the person, character or background of the adversary.
Rush calling Fluke a “slut” fits this description. He did not engage with the substance of her argument regarding contraceptives treating medical conditions; instead, he attacked her character.
The intention is to avoid the implications of a fact or illuminating opinion by asserting: “This person is bad, so don’t listen to what he has to say.”
He avoided the implications of her argument and in fact misrepresented it to his listeners, so this applies.
When successful, ad hominem attacks deflect the real debate and turn it into a debate about something else, focusing on the original speaker, now feeling the need to defend his honor rather than his position.
Misrepresenting the argument by making it about sex, and implying that Fluke must be a sexually loose woman or there would be no reason for her to argue in favor of contraception coverage, certainly “deflects the real debate and turn(s) it into a debate about something else.” It was also prima facie an attack on Fluke’s honor.
Insulting someone while fairly rebutting his argument may be uncivil, which is unethical too, but it is a lesser ethics offense: it is not intended to deceive.
Rush did not fairly rebut her arguments about contraception for medical use, and in fact deceived his audience by making it sound like her interest was purely in use for recreational sex.
Whether that was intentional or a misreading is unclear; I do not tend to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making an effort to honestly represent the arguments of his opponents. This is a man who once argued that Obama and the US military were helping to “wipe out Christians in Uganda” when they helped defend against Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. He later said he may have gotten the facts wrong (he literally just saw the word “Christian” on the LRA wikipedia page and based his analysis on that) but he never apologized to the president or the military for this slander. That was IMO worse than the Fluke thing, and possibly his worst moment.
As for Trump, I hope you wouldn’t deny that he engages in ad hom constantly. When you do so, you invite the same in return. That doesn’t mean that two wrongs make a right, just that leaving out the way he targets others in your final paragraph makes it sound like he is primarily a victim of this rather than primarily a perpetrator.
2. Trump engages in ad hominem attacks all the time, habitually, and I doubt he even sees the distinction you describe. When he is a perpetrator, he is a perpetrator. When he is a victim, he’s a victim. Another one of his (thousands of) ethical blind spots is tit-for-tat: he believes that one is always justified in returning bad conduct with escalated bad conduct. The fact that he thinks that doesn’t change the nature of the conduct, or make it less unethical when he is the victim of it.
1. Rush’s framing of the issue WAS that the issue was sex: he was not bound to accept Fluke’s statement of her motives or her argument. Nor can anyone say (now or then) that his interpretation—that the motive for wanting tax-payer funded birth control was to make others pay for one’s recreational sex—wasn’t sincere or was only designed to misrepresent Fluke. Presumption of bad will is another bias.
Rush was wrong, it was a cheap shot, it lowered the level of the discussion, and it was one of his worst moments. But it wasn’t ad hominem: mind exercise: if Fluke had gained publicity and fame arguing that the government should pay for a woman’s artificial fingernails, should be have called her a slut? If not, then slut in the actual case was obviously based on the substance of her argument.
But your analysis is well-stated.
Rush’s framing of her argument was dishonest. You are of course ethically bound to respond to someone’s actual argument when replying to them instead of creating a strawman based on assumed bad motives, as Rush did to Fluke. I could argue that you are only making the argument you’re making now because you’re a conservative Rush fan who wants to starve the poor and deport all Latinos; would that be ad hom? By your logic, that would not qualify as long as I say I don’t accept your “framing.” Even if I ignore all the criticisms of Rush within your argument, I could just say I don’t believe you and that you’re hiding your true motives, and voila! No ad hom.
I carefully broke down your definition and showed at least four ways Rush’s “slut” comments met it. There were no parts of your original definition that the comments did not meet.
Finally, that the fingernails hypothetical would require more of a stretch to justify the “slut” comments than the actual situation doesn’t make its usage in the actual situation any less of a stretch.
1. I could argue that you are only making the argument you’re making now because you’re a conservative Rush fan who wants to starve the poor and deport all Latinos; would that be ad hom? Yes, because nothing I have said, written or done indicates or suggests any of those things, nor does insisting on the correct definition of ad hominem put me anywhere on the ideological spectrum at all. The critics that say Donald Trump is a racist because of his Birther comments are wrong, and engaging in unethical race-baiting, but that’s not an ad hominem attack. I’d defend any of MSNBC’s worst hacks against the accusation that it was.
2. X wants someone else to pay for birth control—X is reasonably assumed to be someone who would benefit from such a policy—Someone who is so concerned with funding their birth control must engage in a lot of sex, because the expense is negligible—Hence X engages in a lot of sex—slut. The designation is based on the argument, and designed to frame the argument. Limbaugh doubted the sincerity of her advocacy just as you doubt the sincerity of his. Neither of you are making ad hominem arguments.
Ryan’s Comment of the Day on this debate was a fair assessment of the issues. I’m not engaging with you on this further.
3. “Finally, that the fingernails hypothetical would require more of a stretch to justify the “slut” comments than the actual situation doesn’t make its usage in the actual situation any less of a stretch.” Boy, you really don’t want to deal with the real distinction between an insult based on an argument, or an insult meant to discredit an argument because of the alleged character of the advocate! There is no parallel between the fingernails analogy and the birth control analogy, because having irresponsible sex is a characteristic of a “slut,” and wearing fake fingernails is not. It isn’t any more of a stretch? Wow.
Sorry I hope I’m not too late to this shindig…
The reason why calling her a slut is an ad hominem is because, even if she is a huge slut and that’s why she wants free birth control, it has nothing to do with the argument for or against free birth control.
Her being a slut may be a REASON why she wants free birth control, but that’s exactly why this is an ad hominem….since the reason why she is arguing for something or who she is has nothing to do with the actual argument.
Rush was attacking the messenger, not the message. Ad hominem 101.
Wrong. Attacking the messenger based on the perceived message is never ad hominem. If Trump says he wants all illegals out of the country and someone says, “He’s a fascist” because that policy is, they argue, a fascist policy and only fascists would want that, that’s not ad hominem. It’s not even if that accusation is wildly unfair and misuses the term fascist.
Any message can be “percieved;” that doesn’t make it accurate. You’re defining the term out of existence; anyone can say “Well, this is what I percieved the message to be,” no matter how unfair or ridiculous, and then conclude whatever pejorative they called the other party isn’t an “ad hominem.” And only the nerdiest and most pedantic intellectuals will even care to argue over that; Schordinger’s ad hom user will still be an asshole.
Saying “Wrong” and then totally denying what an ad hominem means is an odd choice here Jack.
Attacking the messenger is EXACTLY what an ad hominem is.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad%20hominem
“marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the contentions made”
You’re not arguing that the dictionary is wrong right?
How is her sex life relevant to the argument that we should give free birth control to everyone?
If the argument comes from a nun or a huge slut, it doesn’t matter to the actual argument.
How do you not get this?
Also, “. If Trump says he wants all illegals out of the country and someone says, “He’s a fascist” because that policy is, they argue, a fascist policy and only fascists would want that, that’s not ad hominem.“
No that’s just an insult. But if you say Trump’s policy is wrong because he’s a fascist, then that’s an ad hominem.
Also, policies can be “fascist” Can policies be “slutty”?
“marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the contentions made”
You’re not arguing that the dictionary is wrong right?
How is her sex life relevant to the argument that we should give free birth control to everyone?
How can you ask this? I’ve explained it here many times. Her argument is directly related to Rush’s diagnosis, unfair though it may be. If someone argues that the government should pay for all food, and someone says, that argument can only be made by a glotton who wants everyone else to fund his appetite, that’s not ad hominem, be cause it discredits the substance of the argument by trying to tar it as slef-interested.
If the argument comes from a nun or a huge slut, it doesn’t matter to the actual argument.
irrelevant. Rush did not say, “She’s a slut, so we shouldn’t listen to her argument.” He said, in effect, the fact that she’s making that argument proves that she’s a slut.” he could not have said, “The fact that she’s making that argument proves she’s nun.”
How do you not get this?
It is you who are not getting it. Like the others taking this backwards, your distracted by the slur. If Rush said, “The fact that she’s asking for this just proves that this woman wants someone else to pat for her sexually irresponsible behavior.” Instead he said “slut” for short. That is not an attack “marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the contentions made” but an attack on an opponent’s character BASED ON the contentions made.”
argues that the government should pay for all food, and someone says, that argument can only be made by a glotton who wants everyone else to fund his appetite, that’s not ad hominem, be cause it discredits the substance of the argument by trying to tar it as slef-intereste
Ah I see you, you still don’t understand what an ad hominem is…
This example is also an ad hominem because being fat doesn’t make something false. How can it?
It may make the argument be more suspectful or make you distrust the source or discredit the substance of the arguement, but it doesn’t ACTUALLY make what they said false.
Rush was using her slut status as a way to say she’s wrong.
THATS WHAT AN AD HOMINEM IS!
Her being a slut can make you be suspectful of her arguments, or discredit her, but it doesn’t make her arguments wrong.
Rush said “she’s a slut, so her argument is wrong”
Same with Trump, Trump being a fascist doesn’t make everything he says wrong does it? Sure, it can make you be more suspect of his policies but it doesn’t make his policies wrong.
You’re confusing two totally different things here.
OK, you’re either deliberately being obtuse, you’re trolling, or you’re an idiot. You tell me I don’t understand ad hominem again, and that will be your last comment. That’s a promise.
There was no basis for designating Fluke a slut except for her argument. If Fluke had been making the argument as an established and verifiable “slut” (Stormy is a slut) and Rush discounted her point using that as a basis, THAT would be ad hominem. But the only piece of information that suggested (to Rush, if he was making a serious argument, which I continue to doubt) that she was a “slut” was her position. hence a diagnosis. Hence not ad hominem.
The end. Go scream at clouds if you want. Your participation in this particular thread is over. Go read the Comment guidelines.
I can only assume that the absurd dedication a few commenters have displayed to characterize Limbaugh’s folly as something worse than it was (and it was pretty bad anyway) demonstrates how much he annoyed people used to a particular slant to public discourse being the norm. They still are angry even now, five years after his death. Wow.
Good for him.
An opinion stated as fact can absolutely be a lie.
Ugh. An opinion that something is a fact is not a lie. By your standard, what you just wrote is a lie. A genuine opinion can never be a lie. Mistakes aren’t lies. Being wrong isn’t a lie. Being stupid isn’t a lie. Hyperbole isn’t a lie. A lie is a deliberate falsehood intended to deceive. Nothing more, nothing less. Lying is too basic and crucial a concept to allow sloppy thinking and lazy rhetoric to render it meaningless.
Not even sure I’m replying in the right thread anymore but here goes…
Jack said, “If someone argues that the government should pay for all food, and someone says, that argument can only be made by a glotton who wants everyone else to fund his appetite, that’s not ad hominem, be cause it discredits the substance of the argument by trying to tar it as slef-interested.”
I think we disagree not only about what “ad hominem” means, but what “substance” means in this context.
Rush did not discredit the substance of Fluke’s argument because he did not address the substance of her argument. The substance of her argument, to my mind, would cover what she actually said and the points she made during her testimony. In order to discredit the substance of her argument he would have to address the medical usage of contraception. Instead, he focused on the recreational usage, which was not the substance of her argument. Maybe he genuinely thought that she was lying about her true motives, but that’s not an engagement with the substance of her argument, just a presumption of bad faith, which you already said was a bias.
If someone argued that the government should pay for all food on the basis that this would stimulate the economy by freeing up citizens’ money for other things, and their opponent responded by calling them a glutton who wants the government to fund their appetite, I would see that as ad hominem precisely because it does not discredit, or even acknowledge, the substance of the argument, which was about stimulating the economy.
Your definition of ad hominem here (which I again stress is a bit removed from the definition you provided in the original post) only makes sense if you define “substance of the argument” to mean “whatever the opponent of the argument decides the substance is, even if it bears no relation to what the original speaker said.” I don’t think that’s a fair or useful premise.
There was no basis for designating Fluke a slut except for her argument. If Fluke had been making the argument as an established and verifiable “slut” (Stormy is a slut) and Rush discounted her point using that as a basis, THAT would be ad hominem. But the only piece of information that suggested (to Rush, if he was making a serious argument, which I continue to doubt) that she was a “slut” was her position. hence a diagnosis. Hence not ad hominem.
You can say she’s a slut based on her argument…Rush DID discount her argument because he thought she was a slut…thats why its an ad hominem!
He diagnosed her as a slut AND discount her position because she’s a slut…thats the ad hominem part
And my very liberal aunt reverted Trump’s name to the Germanize version – Donald Johann Drumpf – counted the digits and found that each name had six digits in it. Voila! It’s 666 and he’s the anti-Christ!
Dumb sinister names for famous people are my least favorite of those types of attacks.
It’s the main reason I won’t listen to Mark Levin, who is addicted to that crap. The technique is more properly in the “Poisoning the Well” category among unethical debate tactics. Even calling Bill Clinton “Bubba” was an example.
I had a funny experience with a college classmate around the time of our fiftieth reunion. I found he disapproved of almost anything I asserted or opined about. I realized his was a kind of inverted ad hominem device where he considered it a sufficient refutation to simply say mine was an incorrect assertion or opinion simply because I’d issued it. I guess it was kind of a “consider the source” comment, which is usually made to third parties. Took me a while to figure it out. Hah!
A good portion of the problem in politics is everything has to be filtered through “my side” vs “the evil side.” Sometimes your guy does unethical things and sometimes their guy does ethical things. I’m sick of the double standards, especially from my side.