For some reason, the debate in the comments to the recent post about the proper use of “ad hominem” ended up about Rush Limbaugh, who has been dead for a while now. The issue was whether Rush’s referring to then-Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke, briefly a media star for her argument that birth control should be free, paid for by taxpayers, as a “slut” was an ad hominem attack or not. Ryan Harkins, in his Comment of the Day, decided to arbitrate the dispute, and did so with his usual logic and objectivity.

I do have a couple of points I want to make in this introduction to Ryan’s COTD. He admits that he never listened to Rush, and that’s a problem. As I kept emphasizing in the discussion in the comments, Rush Limbaugh was primarily an entertainer, though he was one with a political agenda and clear ideological orientation. (He was also was master of the slippery “clown nose on/clown nose off” device, like Jon Stewart.) I don’t think he can be fairly analyzed without that context. Ryan says that the use of slut has no place in “honest argumentation,” but Rush Limbaugh’s routines were no more intended as honest argumentation than a Lewis Black set or a Louie CK rant.

Nor can his work be fairly assessed second or third hand. There are several posts about Rush on Ethics Alarms; my wrap-up on his career and legacy is here.

I also neglected to mention in my lengthy exchange with jdkazoo123 that I did designate Rush’s “slut” comment about Fluke as “the worst of Rush.” That still doesn’t make it “ad hominem.” Limbaugh also apologized for that insult, something he didn’t often do, but it was pretty clearly a forced apology, though he said it was sincere. His show was losing sponsors over the controversy. Fluke refused to accept the apology.

Here is Ryan’s Comment of the Day on the post, actually the comments on the post, “I Guess It’s Time For Another “Ad Hominem” Lesson.”

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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.