{"id":6937,"date":"2006-03-23T14:16:22","date_gmt":"2006-03-23T19:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6937"},"modified":"2006-03-23T14:16:22","modified_gmt":"2006-03-23T19:16:22","slug":"straw-man-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/straw-man-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Straw-Man Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since Jennifer Loven’s terrific AP article<\/a> over the weekend on Bush’s straw-men arguments, I’ve found it hard to listen to White House officials without noticing how dependent the Bush gang is on this inane rhetorical game. It’s almost as if they can’t help themselves.<\/p>\n

The president had a real gem<\/a> yesterday.<\/p>\n

“Now, I understand some say, well, maybe they’re just isolated kind of people that are angry and took out their anger with an attack. That’s not how I view them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Dan Froomkin responded<\/a>, “Question for the White House: Can you name one political leader who has said any such thing?” I’d add that if we expand the question beyond political leaders, can the White House name any American anywhere who’s made this argument?<\/p>\n

And speaking of Loven’s AP article, some conservatives apparently get very<\/i> annoyed<\/a> when journalists write accurate news stories that expose the absurdities of the president’s rhetorical devices.<\/p>\n

Did a recent Associated Press story examining President George Bush’s alleged tendency to use a “straw man” approach in his speeches cross the line from news to biased opinion? Or was it just a long-overdue, in-depth review of the president’s public speaking approach? […]<\/p>\n

“Loven has written some astonishingly biased ‘news’ articles attacking President Bush,” Powerlineblog.com claimed this week. It then called the straw-man piece “a new low” that “masquerades as a straight news article, but reads like a DNC press release.” It ends by saying “there must be someone at AP who wants the organization to be taken seriously as a news source. If that’s true, sacking Jennifer Loven would be a good first step.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, by all means, let’s fire a reporter for having the gall to write an article exposing one of the president’s favorite rhetorical devices, and quoting on experts presidential rhetoric, including the director of the non-partisan Annenberg Public Policy Center, who said Bush’s arguments abuse the rules of legitimate discussion.<\/p>\n

Dismissal is the only logical approach. I’m sure the AP could replace Loven with some 24-year-old blogger who thinks Coretta Scott King was a communist….
\n
\nPost Script<\/i>: And speaking of the straw-man phenomenon, Tristero had a fun post today<\/a> on a sub-category of the strawman argument that she calls the “jeffies.” Take a look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since Jennifer Loven’s terrific AP article over the weekend on Bush’s straw-men arguments, I’ve found it hard to listen to White House officials without noticing how dependent the Bush gang is on this inane rhetorical game. It’s almost as if they can’t help themselves. The president had a real gem yesterday. “Now, I understand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}