Posted by
Bullpen on Thursday, February 21, 2008 8:03:20 PM
Today in my presentational speaking class our professor began talking about rhetorical fallacies in order to prepare us for our upcoming persuasive speeches. In order to apply this to us better, she began using examples for each one. Sure. Why not? The problem is, she used political examples and forgot to hide her extreme liberal (Obama supporter) bias. Like a magician she gave her students the illusion that Republicans were all bad people and all of their arguments were fallacious. Ah, college life.
Among the gems she had:
Ad Hominem--Attacking the Person rather than the argument
For her first trick, she addressed Ann Coulter’s personal attacks on people. After listing what Ann had said about people out of context, she proceeded to attack Ann Coulter as a person, saying she was mannish and angry. And not once did Michael Moore come to mind…
Hasty Generalization--basing a conclusion on too few or isolated examples
She talked about Bill Clinton saying Barack Obama’s life was a fairytale and ranted about it for a while. Except that isn’t what he said. His statement was about Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War. So she based a conclusion on too little information. Bravo.
Red Herring Argument--distracting people from the truth
She claimed that there is currently a recession that we are being lied to about(never mind that we haven’t had a period of economic contraction yet). Also claimed that President Bush distracted us with claims that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, was like Hitler, and was all around a horrible human being in order to invade. Except that every intelligence agency said he did have them(and we actually did find some), he used them to commit genocide, and he once invaded a country south of him and refused to accept the sanctions against him for doing so. But that didn’t stop my professor from distracting us from the truth. I was expecting her to say there was nothing up here sleeve too.
Black and White Argument--forcing people to choose one way or the other
She quickly pulled abortion out of her hat. As soon as there is a middle ground on this I will let you know. There is no such thing as kind of aborting a child.
This is where I should remind you that this is a required class that costs money.
The whole experience was like something out of a movie. The girl who was ironically sitting to the left of me was the only person I noticed who thought this was as ridiculous as I did. We laughed each time she did it. I said to her “Wow…this is kind of funny”, to which she replied “It really isn’t though. All of these people actually believe her and she is eating this up.” She was right, the magician had fooled them into suspending their disbelief and got them to participate in the show.
At the very end our professor told us not to persuade people on ignorance, a fallacy known as “Ad Ignoratiam.” I wanted to applaud. It was a wonderful show. The only problem was almost everyone else did not know it was just smoke and mirrors.