Category Archives: Fallacies of ambiguity

Begging the Question, George Will, Suppressed Evidence

On the merits

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We’re back from Spring Break.  Opening up today’s Washington Post, we noticed that George Will holding forth on the judiciary.  For those who don’t know, George Will has one thing to say about the judiciary: it shouldn’t be in the business of making social policy.  Of course that’s a silly view, because it purposely ignores the questions the courts must resolve: what is the law?  What does it mean to "bear arms"?  What does "free speech" mean?  What is "equal protection"?  These are unavoidable social policy questions.

Today he animates his usual complaint with the following statistic:

The denial of annual increases, Roberts wrote, "has left federal trial
judges — the backbone of our system of justice — earning about the
same as (and in some cases less than) first-year lawyers
at firms in major cities, where many of the judges are located." The
cost of rectifying this would be less than .004 percent of the federal
budget. The cost of not doing so will be a decrease in the quality of
an increasingly important judiciary — and a change in its perspective.
Fifty years ago, about 65 percent of the federal judiciary came from
the private sector — from the practicing bar — and 35 percent from
the public sector. Today 60 percent come from government jobs, less
than 40 percent from private practice. This tends to produce a
judiciary that is not only more important than ever but also is more of
an extension of the bureaucracy than a check on it.

I wonder what "government job" means in this instance.  Could it mean they were judges?  That’s a government job.  And I’d hardly call that particular government job "an extension of the bureaucracy" (since, after all, the judiciary is a branch of the government).  

But what silly conclusion does Will draw from this?

Upon what meat hath our judiciary fed in growing so great? The meat of
modern liberalism, the animating doctrine of the regulatory and
redistributionist state. Courts have been pulled where politics,
emancipated from constitutional constraints, has taken the law — into
every facet of life.

Even though the "government job" set-up is silly, this is even sillier.  But it’s the typical Will complaint about the courts.  Courts, Will complains, have been pulled around by politics, etc. etc.  That’s a silly objection.  Here’s why: the courts decide political issues.   They have to.  It’s their job.  When they decide these questions, they give arguments, called "opinions."  These contain what they consider the legal rationale for the position they take.  If Will doesn’t like this legal rationale, then he owes the courts an argument, as they say in legal circles, "on the merits."  To ignore this obvious fact, as Will does, is what one might call "begging the question." 

For the one or maybe two conservatives who may stumble upon this, I’m not arguing that the opposite of Will’s view (whatever that might be) is correct.  I’m merely suggesting that his complaint about the judiciary is hollow.  There probably are some pretty good conservative positions on the judiciary.  It’s a shame that shallow whining of the Will variety has achieved such prominence. 

Academics, Post hoc ergo propter, Suppressed Evidence

I couldn’t help but think

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People may have seen Hillary Clinton’s now much lampooned television advertisement.  She answers the phone at 3 AM, all ready for dealing with some  world crisis.  Some have seen a cause for concern.  Among them Harvard sociology Professor Orlando Patterson.  His op-ed contribution leaves much to be desired in the logic category.  We couldn’t help but think of two points.

First, the phrase "I couldn’t help but think of x" probably ought to be retired.  I don’t know when one can help but think of stuff.  The stuff I think of is mostly involuntary.  Well, here’s the phrase:

I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and
slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent
sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of
mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t
help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist
movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of
black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger
implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering
the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to
protect us from this threat.

Pointing out that you couldn’t help but think of something seems like an odd way to separate yourself from your thoughts (he does it twice in this piece).  I can’t help but think of a lot of things.  But I can help but write them.

Here’s the second point (this point has, by the way, already been made across the blogosphere.  See the Daily Howler for particularly acute analysis). I think Patterson’s reading of this advert is way of the mark, particularly when it comes to the empirical questions.  He writes, later:

Did the message get through? Well, consider this: people who voted
early went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama; those who made up their minds
during the three days after the ad was broadcast voted heavily for Mrs.
Clinton.

Don’t know about the implication there.  Seems like there are many obvious countervailing factors that need to be considered before one can buy the inference that the racist ad–actually, not just the ad, the racism of the ad–seriously changed people’s minds.  There’s more:

It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in
Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites
favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not
in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites. Exit
polls on March 4 showed the ad’s effect in Texas: a 12-point swing to
56 percent of white votes toward Mrs. Clinton. It is striking, too,
that during the same weekend the ad was broadcast, Mrs. Clinton refused
to state unambiguously that Mr. Obama is a Christian and has never been
a Muslim.

That last claim, I think, is dubious.  The poll reading, without question, leaves much to be desired.  I couldn’t help but think of that. 

Equivocation, Inexplicable

Support

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One word could be blamed for the intellectual muddle that led to war in Iraq.  The constant refrain of 2003 was: "support the troops."  The word support was aptly chosen, of course, by the war party, as the poll question used the same word when asking whether Americans favored war: do you support the President's decision to go to war?  Do you support the war?  People supported the troops, so of course they supported the war. 

Now the word support has a new job: do you repudiate (or reject!) the support of x?  Colbert I King reports the following question (which he got from the Politico.com, but I can't find it there) asked of Hillary Clinton:

 "But you criticized Obama for not rejecting the support of Farrakhan."

Here's Tim Russert badgering Obama about Louis Farrakhan's support:

RUSSERT: Senator Obama, one of the things in a campaign is that you have to react to unexpected developments. On Sunday, the headline in your hometown paper, Chicago Tribune: "Louis Farrakhan backs Obama for president at Nation of Islam convention in Chicago." Do you accept the support of Louis Farrakhan?

OBAMA: You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can't censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we're not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.

RUSSERT: Do you reject his support?

OBAMA: Well, Tim, you know, I can't say to somebody that he can't say that he thinks I'm a good guy. [laughter] You know, I — you know, I — I have been very clear in my denunciations of him and his past statements, and I think that indicates to the American people what my stance is on those comments.

RUSSERT: The problem some voters may have is, as you know, Reverend Farrakhan called Judaism "gutter religion."

OBAMA: Tim, I think — I am very familiar with his record, as are the American people. That's why I have consistently denounced it. This is not something new. This is something that — I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I've been very clear in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him.

RUSSERT: The title of one of your books, Audacity of Hope, you acknowledge you got from a sermon from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the head of the Trinity United Church. He said that Louis Farrakhan "epitomizes greatness." He said that he went to Libya in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan to visit with Muammar Qaddafi and that, when your political opponents found out about that, quote, "your Jewish support would dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell."

What do you do to assure Jewish Americans that, whether it's Farrakhan's support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?

OBAMA: Tim, I have some of the strongest support from the Jewish community in my hometown of Chicago and in this presidential campaign. And the reason is because I have been a stalwart friend of Israel's. I think they are one of our most important allies in the region, and I think that their security is sacrosanct, and that the United States is in a special relationship with them, as is true with my relationship with the Jewish community.

And the reason that I have such strong support is because they know that not only would I not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form, but also because of the fact that what I want to do is rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African-American community and the Jewish community.

You know, I would not be sitting here were it not for a whole host of Jewish Americans who supported the civil rights movement and helped to ensure that justice was served in the South. And that coalition has frayed over time around a whole host of issues, and part of my task in this process is making sure that those lines of communication and understanding are reopened.

But, you know, the reason that I have such strong support in the Jewish community and have historically — it was true in my U.S. Senate campaign, and it's true in this presidency — is because the people who know me best know that I consistently have not only befriended the Jewish community, not only have I been strong on Israel, but, more importantly, I've been willing to speak out even when it is not comfortable.

When I was — just the last point I would make — when I was giving — had the honor of giving a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in conjunction with Martin Luther King's birthday in front of a large African-American audience, I specifically spoke out against anti-Semitism within the African-American community. And that's what gives people confidence that I will continue to do that when I'm president of the United States.

BRIAN WILLIAMS (co-moderator): Senator —

CLINTON: Tim, I just want to add something here, because I faced a similar situation when I ran for the Senate in 2000 in New York. And in New York, there are more than the two parties, Democratic and Republican. And one of the parties at that time, the Independence Party, was under the control of people who were anti-Semitic, anti-Israel. And I made it very clear that I did not want their support. I rejected it. I said that it would not be anything I would be comfortable with. And it looked as though I might pay a price for that. But I would not be associated with people who said such inflammatory and untrue charges against either Israel or Jewish people in our country.

And, you know, I was willing to take that stand, and, you know, fortunately the people of New York supported me and I won. But at the time, I thought it was more important to stand on principle and to reject the kind of conditions that went with support like that.

RUSSERT: Are you suggesting Senator Obama is not standing on principle?

CLINTON: No. I'm just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it. And there's a difference between denouncing and rejecting. And I think when it comes to this sort of, you know, inflammatory — I have no doubt that everything that Barack just said is absolutely sincere. But I just think, we've got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in any way say these things because of the implications that they have, which can be so far-reaching.

OBAMA: Tim, I have to say I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. There's no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word "reject" Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word "denounce," then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.

CLINTON: Good. Good. Excellent.

Even McCain has the same problem:

"Yesterday, Pastor John Hagee endorsed my candidacy for president in San Antonio, Texas. However, in no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee's views, which I obviously do not.

"I am hopeful that Catholics, Protestants and all people of faith who share my vision for the future of America will respond to our message of defending innocent life, traditional marriage, and compassion for the most vulnerable in our society."

This is all kind of dumb.  One would expect a candidate to have enough self-confidence and independence to distinguish herself or himself from the views of every last voter.  Besides, I wonder what the appropriate remedy is here.  Does Obama have to beg Farrakhan to vote for someone else?  Can't Obama (or McCain or Clinton) say: "I'm glad to have the votes of Hagee, Farrakhan or whomever, but they ought to know that I won't advance core aspects of their agenda?"?  What does "reject support" even mean?

More fundamentally, if the implication is that the support of Hagee et alia means there's something Hagee-like (because birds of a feather. . . ), then why not just talk about the Hagee-like bits of McCain's view?  That's more efficient.

Begging the Question

The Banality of Fallacy

We may not write about it much, but we like books. We hope you do to. Do you know who else likes books? Fred Siegel, that's who; and he talks about it. A lot. In fact, he's read a lot of books and come to the conclusion the "Politics of Hope" is a hopeless junket. In fact, this pie-in-sky "utopianism" cashes out to little more than fascism, communism or and totalitarianism. I really hope he's got an argument for this. Oh, joy:

Emerson wrote during a time of numerous experiments in utopian living. Obama—whose candidacy rests upon a standard utopian dichotomy between the earthly evils of poverty, injustice, war, and partisanship, and the promise of the world to come if we allow him to rescue us—appeals to the same Elysian strain in American and Western political life, largely in remission since 1980, when the 1960s truly ended.

… 

In the wake of bloody utopian experiments in 1930s Europe, a slew of erudite authors launched compelling attacks on them. Jacob Talmon, Karl Popper, Raymond Aaron, Czeslaw Milosz, and Hannah Arendt laid waste to the historical, philosophical, sociological, and literary assumptions that supported communism and fascism. But their arguments didn’t endure, despite their power. By the mid-1960s, utopianism had again taken hold, and its lure was such that even Arendt, once a vocal opponent, found herself drawn to the religion of politics. Propelled by her disdain for America in general and the Vietnam War in particular, as well as the promise, as she saw it, of worker-control experiments in Europe, she effectively reversed much of her earlier writings.

…

 Obama’s utopian vision of transcending the interests that make up the fabric of our democracy is unlikely to fare any better than the “politics of hope” did in Emerson’s time. The key question at hand is whether Obama’s Edenic bubble bursts before or after the election.

Nice. Emerson wrote when utopian projects were the latest fad. Those failed, ergo Emerson failed. If Obama's populism appeals to the same strain of American thought as Emerson's, who wrote around the time of utopian projects, Obama must be a utopian thinker. And, as we all know, utopianism is just warmed over communism and fascism.  Since Obama is a utopian, and thereby a communist/fascist, Obama is doomed to fail, just like communism and fascism have failed, thus, the Politics of Hope is a sham. Got it. Solid reasoning.

No Bear 

Besides the obvious factual objections that might be made to Siegel's claims, note the subtle shift from speaking about communism and fascism to speaking about utopianism as if they were the same thing. And it's not that Siegel simply doesn't argue for this position, its that he assumes it as evidently true in the course of his argument.

Equivocation, Stanley Fish

The plain phenomena

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Stanley Fish often plays the equivocation game.  This game consists in solving a real philosophical problem by erasing or denying  some of its critical semantic and conceptual distinctions.  It's more parlor trick than intellectual move.  I heard him do this the other day on NPR's "Talk of the Nation."  Near the end of the section a caller had made the claim that one ought not to vote narrowly on his or her own interests.  Some minutes later, even after another caller had spoken about a different issue, Stanley Fish returned to make the point that it's just false that you cannot vote your own "interests."  It's impossible, in other words, not to vote your interests.  

For those familiar with a little bit of Plato and Aristotle, this sounds a lot like the following: it's impossible, so said Socrates, to know the good and not do it.  If you don't do the good, you don't know what it is.  Those in philosophical land will recognize this as the problem of akrasia.  They will also notice that there might be any number of plausible interpretations of Socrates's position.  Let me draw on one for the purposes of illustration.  You will always do, Socrates seems to say, what you view as the good.  Even if its bad, you view it as the good.  It's the good because all actions aim at the good.  Even if the good is bad.  For you it's the good.  See?

Nor did Aristotle.  He said this view "contradicts the plain phenomena."  People do all the time what they know they shouldn't be doing. 

So on one reading, the Socratic position plays on a semantic ambiguity in order to claim that "doing the good" is a "definitional"  or "analytic" truth. 

Having said all that, let's return to Stanley Fish.  In his column in the New York Times he makes a similar point:

We should distinguish, I think, between two forms of identity politics. The first I have already named “tribal”; it is the politics based on who a candidate is rather than on what he or she believes or argues for. And that, I agree, is usually a bad idea. (I say “usually” because it is possible to argue that the election of a black or female president, no matter what his or positions happen to be, will be more than a symbolic correction of the errors that have marred the country’s history, and an important international statement as well.) The second form of identity politics is what I call “interest” identity politics. It is based on the assumption (itself resting on history and observation) that because of his or her race or ethnicity or gender a candidate might pursue an agenda that would advance the interests a voter is committed to. Not only is there nothing wrong with such a calculation – it is both rational and considered – I don’t see that there is an alternative to voting on the basis of interest.

The last claim–there is no alternative to voting on the basis of interest–has that "analytical" ring to it.  Notice, however, how Fish uses that broad analytical sense of interest to make the more narrow claim that one must vote for one's identity interests. Fish ought to know that these are two rather different senses of the term "interest."  But he doesn't.  Following this he asserts:

The alternative usually put forward is Crouch’s: Vote “for human qualities” rather than sectarian qualities. That is, vote on the basis of reasons everyone, no matter what his or her identity, will acknowledge as worthy.

That really isn't the real alternative.  The real alternative would return to the sensible discussion of interest.  If we grant that it's analytically true that everyone votes his own interest, we can put aside the question of interest as telling us nothing interesting, and return to the discussion we were having before–which of my many interests ought to be the deciding factor in voting in a democracy?  My economic interests?  My racial identity interests?  My religious interests?  My professional interests, my family interests, my friend's interests, my leisure interests, my civic interests?  Knowing that I must vote for one, because that's the nature of reality, doesn't help me figure which one.   

Lack of Evidence, Plain Bad Arguments, Suppressed Evidence, Things that are false, Weak Analogy, William Kristol

Kristolspeak

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It's hard to see what William Kristol brings to the discussion on anything.  Today he analogizes the Republican and Democratic parties to the ruling and opposition parties in Britain, via, get this, a George Orwell essay on Kipling.  Kristol writes:

“In a gifted writer,” Orwell remarks, “this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality.” Kipling “at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like.” For, Orwell explains, “The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.” Furthermore, “where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly.”

If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell’s argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

The "vulgarization" overlooks the entirely unavoidable fact that the US government is designed with three branches.  If a party controls one of them–say, Congress–then that party isn't an opposition party.  Alright, so the premise of this piece is strained.  But what about the main point, someone may wonder.

Having controlled the executive branch for 28 of the last 40 years, Republicans tend to think of themselves as the governing party — with some of the arrogance and narrowness that implies, but also with a sense of real-world responsibility. Many Democrats, on the other hand, no long even try to imagine what action and responsibility are like. They do, however, enjoy the support of many refined people who snigger at the sometimes inept and ungraceful ways of the Republicans. (And, if I may say so, the quality of thought of the Democrats’ academic and media supporters — a permanent and, as it were, pensioned opposition — seems to me to have deteriorated as Orwell would have predicted.)

So this stuff Orwell–I can't believe he actually used Orwell–said about the opposition party was merely a means of saying the "quality of thought" of the "opposition" and its "academic and media supporters" has "deteriorated."  One would be curious to know how, in particular–or jeez even in general–the "quality of thought" of the academic and media supporters has "deteriorated."  Could Kristol at least give an example of this particular claim?

The freakish, yes freakish, thing about this article is that Kristol goes on to use this Orwellian premise to complain about the Democrats' obstruction of legislation aimed at protecting private companies from the legal consequences of their participation in   warrantless–and therefore illegal–surveillance:

But the Democratic House leadership balked — particularly at the notion of protecting from lawsuits companies that had cooperated with the government in surveillance efforts after Sept. 11. Director McConnell repeatedly explained that such private-sector cooperation is critical to antiterror efforts, in surveillance and other areas, and that it requires the assurance of immunity. “Your country is at risk if we can’t get the private sector to help us, and that is atrophying all the time,” he said. But for the House Democrats, sticking it to the phone companies — and to the Bush administration — seemed to outweigh erring on the side of safety in defending the country.

He should have worked Orwell into that paragraph.

Begging the Question

Middle of the road

I find this sort of attitude baffling.  In a review of Richard Thompson Ford's The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, William Grimes, the New York Times reviewer writes:

When he bears down, however, Mr. Ford is bracing. He clears away a lot of clutter, nonsense and bad faith. Best of all, he argues his humane, centrist position without apology or hesitation. Sticking to the middle of the road, after all, can be the fastest way to get where you’re going.

Mr. Ford wants to move beyond name calling and emotional point scoring. Let’s reserve the word racist, he suggests, for clear-cut instances of bigotry, and address more subtle problems of racial prejudice as we do air pollution, instead of rape or murder.

Two things.  One, I would hardly call the "middle of the road" remark axiomatic.  Whether it really is the fastest way to get where you're going depends on whether the road runs by George Allen's house.

This leads to a second point.  I can't think of anyone who would say: "I don't want to move beyond name calling and point scoring.  I'm happy with that."  That's about as empty a pronouncement as "let's move beyond false beliefs." And reserving the word "racist" for "clear-cut" instances of racism just begs the questions against those who level the accusation.  They, after all, think they have reasons.  What constitutes a clear-cut instance of racism, indeed, is just the issue.  What are those clear-cut instances?  I can't really say for sure, because, as is the case with false beliefs, they never seem to be racist to those involved.

Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, David Brooks, False Dichotomy, General discussion, Paul Krugman

Iceman

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David Brooks, famous dichotomist, meditates on the health care proposal Hillary Clinton.  This is to say that he uses the anecdotes of a political opponent some 15 years ago to describe her as "icy" (three times in 700 some words) and nameless sources to describe her "evil look."  The column is an abomination for other reasons as well, not the least of which is the fact that Brooks accuses Clinton–Hillary Clinton I say–of being "Manichean."  Up until recently for David Brooks, being Manichean about matters of right and wrong was a virtue.  No longer:

Moreover, the debate Clinton is having with Barack Obama echoes the debate she had with Cooper 15 years ago. The issue, once again, is over whether to use government to coerce people into getting coverage. The Clintonites argue that without coercion, there will be free-riders on the system.

They’ve got a point. But there are serious health care economists on both sides of the issue. And in the heat of battle, Clinton has turned the debate between universal coverage and universal access into a sort of philosophical holy grail, with a party of righteousness and a party of error. She’s imposed Manichaean categories on a technical issue, just as she did a decade and half ago. And she’s done it even though she hasn’t answered legitimate questions about how she would enforce her universal coverage mandate.

Gee.  If Ms. Clinton has a point about mandates, then why doesn't David Brooks talk about it?  After all, that would be the foundation, so it seems (since she has a point) of Hillary Clinton's position.  Instead of a policy discussion (which, agree or disagree, you will have with Paul Krugman), Brooks treats his readers to, ironically, a little "politics of personal destruction."   

Equivocation, Michael Gerson

But he tried

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Some talk of a kind of welfare for rich people.  Despite enormous advantages, standards for them really are lower than for the rest of us.  Some talk of a kind of welfare for conservative ideologues.  Few believe their ideas, so goes the claim, but they achieve national prominence anyway.  That may be the case.  Michael Gerson might be an example of the latter–he's a conservative ideologue, he was the President's speech writer for Pete's sake, and now he has a position in a national newspaper, where he can argue that the standards for Bush, a privileged prep school kid, ought to be lower: 

My goal is a humbler assessment: Did President Bush, in the course of seven years, cast aside compassion and become the "same kind of Republican"?

The answer is no. Proposals such as No Child Left Behind, the AIDS and malaria initiatives, and the addition of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare would simply not have come from a traditional conservative politician. They became the agenda of a Republican administration precisely because of Bush's persistent, passionate advocacy. To put it bluntly, these would not have been the priorities of a Cheney administration.

This leaves critics of the Bush administration with a "besides" problem. Bush is a heartless and callous conservative, "besides" the 1.4 million men, women and children who are alive because of treatment received through his AIDS initiative . . . "besides" the unquestioned gains of African American and Hispanic students in math and reading . . . "besides" 32 million seniors getting help to afford prescription drugs, including 10 million low-income seniors who get their medicine pretty much free. Iraq may have overshadowed these achievements; it does not eliminate them.

Many have convincingly argued that these programs have been rhetorical successes–like, for instance, the term "compassionate conservatism"–and not much else.  One could and no doubt one will examine the evidence of the success and actual earnestness of these programs, against the ones that were vetoed or the problems that were ignored or the federal agencies staffed with incompetent cronies, and so forth.  But Gerson's invocation of Dick Cheney has some kind of meaningful comparison in compassion really makes that point on its own.

Ad Hominem, Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, Argument Analysis, Bloggers, False Dichotomy, Inexplicable, Red Herring, Straw Man

How not to respond to criticism

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Here is a journalist with 20 years experience illustrating how not to respond to criticism.  The email is so bad that one might think he was either drunk or it was written by an impostor.  Here's the story.  Greenwald wrote a post on his blog, Unclaimed Territory, about the fawning tone of CNN correspondent John King's interview of John McCain.  You can read that here (it's short), but here's a sample question:

* KING: As you know, one of the issues you have had here in South Carolina in the past is either people don't understand your social conservative record or they're not willing to concede your social conservative record. There's a mailing that hit South Carolina homes yesterday. It's a picture of you and Cindy on the front. It says "Always pro-life, 24-year record." Why do you think you still, after all this time, have to convince these people, "I have been with you from the beginning"?

I'm sure you get the idea.  Not exactly critical journalism (follow Greenwald's links for more).  Here below is John King's response.  For the sake of clarity, I'll insert comments in brackets (courtesy of Glenn Greenwald)

From: King, John C

To: GGreenwald@salon.com

Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 5:40 PM

Subject: excuse me? [a more neutral subject heading–e.g., response to your blogpost]

I don't read biased uninformed drivel so I'm a little late to the game. [this is somewhat self-contradictory: either the post was not "biased uninformed drivel" (and so not worthy of the charge) or he does read bias uniformed drivel.  In either case, that's a pretty serious compound charge–biased and uninformed.  One is sufficient for dismissal.

But a friend who understands how my business works and knows a little something about my 20 plus years in it sent me the link to your ramblings. [Now they're "ramblings"–biased uninformed drivel ramblings–that's four insults]

Since the site suggests you have law training, maybe you forgot that good lawyers to a little research before they spit out words. [The site says Greenwald is a lawyer]

Did you think to ask me or anyone who works with me whether that was the entire interview? No. (It was not; just a portion used by one of the many CNN programs.) [Notice how King responds to his own rhetorical question.  Aside from that, it's irrelevant to the criticism.  Besides, it suggests that King agrees with Greenwald about the fawning tone of the questions and suggests that CNN edited it to appear that way].

Did you reach out to ask the purpose of that specific interview? No. [More extra-textual irrelevance].

Or how it might have fit in with other questions being asked of other candidates that day? No. [He now seems to be conceding the point.  Besides, fawning questions to the other candidates would only reinforce the point that they're not real questions.  Asking fake questions to other candidates doesn't make them any less fake].

Or anything that might have put facts or context or fairness into your critique. No. [So he definitely agrees, but thinks Greenwald has been unfair–there's a context that explains it].

McCain, for better or worse, is a very accessible candidate. If you did a little research (there he goes with that word again) you would find I have had my share of contentious moments with him over the years. [So these are not contentious questions.  But King, an ad hominizer, sees others as he sees himself–attacking the person.  His having asked "contentious" questions in the past doesn't make, however, the questions of the other day any less silly].

But because of that accessibility, you don't have to go into every interview asking him about the time he cheated on his sixth grade math test. [Now he really misunderstands the nature of the criticism.  And again it's ad hominem: He suggests Greenwald wants him to ask mean, irrelevant questions about McCain's childhood.  If that is King's sense of a real journalistic question, then it's worse than Greenwald suggests].

The interview was mainly to get a couple of questions to him on his thoughts on the role of government when the economy is teetering on the edge of recession, in conjunction with similar questions being put to several of the other candidates. [Like in comedy, it's not funny if you have to explain it–unless you make the explanation funny–which this isn't.  I think.].

The portion you cited was aired by one of our programs — so by all means it is fair game for whatever "analysis" you care to apply to it using your right of free speech and your lack of any journalistic standards or fact checking or just plain basic curiosity. [It's always nice to have someone point out your rights.  I find it difficult, however, to follow King's point.  He agrees (or seems to agree) that questions he asked were soft balls, and that they were made a public document, but he charges that because Greenwald did not examine the non-public aspects of the interview (including the journalist's personal history of skepticism regarding McCain), that the analysis is wrong.  That seems really messed up, to put it bluntly.  CNN hires journalists, pays them to ask questions, and then airs the segment.  But we the viewing public are supposed to consider all of the things in the interview that were not aired before we draw any conclusions.  That just seems to undermine the whole point of airing the interview in the first place.] 

You clearly know very little about journalism. But credibility matters. It is what allows you to cover six presidential campaigns and be viewed as fair and respectful, while perhaps a little cranky, but Democrats and Republicans alike. When I am writing something that calls someone's credibility into question, I pick up the phone and give them a chance to give their side, or perspective. [Another irrelevant ad hominem coupled with an auto-pro-homine: an "I'm awesome and you're jerk."]

That way, even on days that I don't consider my best, or anywhere close, I can look myself in the mirror and know I tried to be fair and didn't call into question someone's credibility just for sport, or because I like seeing my name on a website or my face on TV. [Ah yes.  You're just saying that because–the ad hominem circumstantial.  You don't have reasons for what you say, you just say that to get noticed!]

The truly silly thing about this response is that King never challenges any one of Greenwald's points.  He concedes them in fact,  repeatedly, and from several different angles, but he alleges that Greenwald is a jerk for not knowing that no one is supposed to take King's work seriously.  This reminds me of something Krusty the Clown said when he was running for Congress: when you react like that (to his racist jokes) it means he was kidding.