{"id":251,"date":"2006-09-27T17:44:04","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T21:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=251"},"modified":"2006-09-27T17:44:04","modified_gmt":"2006-09-27T21:44:04","slug":"balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The idea that Bush fights battles with imaginary foes&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?cat=12\">straw men<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?cat=29\">red herring<\/a>&#8211;does not strike us as so novel.  We&#8217;ve documented this tendency among the argumentative press for a while now.  Only now is it getting any traction.  It&#8217;s certainly reassuring that some in the media give a rats about such things.  But it&#8217;s not so reassuring when they completely bungle in it the name of balance.<\/p>\n<p>An example of the first (reassuring) thing is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/linkset\/2005\/04\/11\/LI2005041100879.html\">Dan Froomkin<\/a> (go read the entire White House Briefing&#8211;it&#8217;s worth it):<\/p>\n<p>>Rather than acknowledge and attempt to rebut the many concerns about his policies, Bush makes up inane arguments and then ridicules them.<\/p>\n<p>And Froomkin gives abundant examples.<\/p>\n<p>Over at the New York Times, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/09\/26\/us\/politics\/26language.html?_r=2&#038;oref=slogin&#038;oref=slogin\">Jim Rutenberg<\/a> approaches the same topic, but finds something bad to say about Democrats:<\/p>\n<p>>The White House <strong>is hardly alone<\/strong> in its pointed use of language against political opponents.<\/p>\n<p>The Bush variety (again&#8211;look at the examples) of straw man or red herring amounts to much more than the pointed use of language.  It&#8217;s the wholesale invention of an opponent.  Do they Democrats do that?  If they do, Rutenberg doesn&#8217;t say so.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The idea that Bush fights battles with imaginary foes&#8211;straw men or red herring&#8211;does not strike us as so novel. We&#8217;ve documented this tendency among the argumentative press for a while now. Only now is it getting any traction. It&#8217;s certainly reassuring that some in the media give a rats about such things. But it&#8217;s not &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=251\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Balance<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bush","category-straw-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}