{"id":2968,"date":"2011-06-16T18:59:47","date_gmt":"2011-06-16T23:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2968"},"modified":"2011-06-16T18:59:47","modified_gmt":"2011-06-16T23:59:47","slug":"ironic-in-other-words-tu-quoque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2968","title":{"rendered":"Ironic, in other words, tu quoque"},"content":{"rendered":"

Target stores are doing their best to fight the unions.  They've made some anti-union videos to be shown during training sessions.  They employed union actors to make the videos.  Here's<\/a> the story in Salon.com, and the author, Justin Elliot, sees the tension:<\/p>\n

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Oh, the irony! Target Corp., long locked in a battle with labor organizers, filmed a notorious internal anti-union video with union actors and under the jurisdiction of one of the biggest unions in the entertainment business.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The trouble with the observation, at least argumentatively, is that it's clearly a critical statement, but it's not clear yet what the criticism amounts to.  What follows from the fact that Target used union workers to make a video against unions?  The actor who is one of the spokespeople in the video, Ric Reitz, felt it was "awkward" for him, not for Target.<\/p>\n

Tu quoque arguments, like with many of the fallacy forms, usually are deployed cursorially, and one element of this cursorial presentation is conclusion suppression.  And so it has been said: <\/p>\n

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Have you ever noticed that liberals want to kill babies but save the lives of hardened criminals?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Have you ever noticed how Christians worship someone who calls himself the prince of peace, but they themselves are crazed warmongers?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What follows from either of these tu quoque<\/em> cases?  Not clear in either, but they are clearly critical.  And so some reconstruction is in order.  Perhaps with the liberals one, the observation is that the values are upside down, and so we know something about the kind of person who'd make that error.  Perhaps with the Christians case, the point is about self-deception.  Those are pretty charitable, but, hey, even fallacy forms deserve a little love.<\/p>\n

So what's the charitable interpretation of the Target case?  One interpretation of Target's actions is that they did not look into whether the actors were union-affiliated, or if they knew so, their being in a union is immaterial, because these employees are utterly temporary, and Target won't have to deal with them again.  Store employees are different, and that's what they are out to prohibit.  Another charitable interpretation of Target's actions is that they genuinely do believe that unions get in the way of good business practice, but they won't begrudge individual actors and actresses who've made the error of joining one.<\/p>\n

How about charitable interpretations of the argument as criticism, though? Here's one: Target has a double standard. On the one hand, there are actors, and they deserve the protections that unions can provide.  And on the other hand, there are the people that Target employs.  Target treats them however they like. Here's another: Target will play ball with unions. They just don't like to.  Here's one more: Target recognizes the quality of work that unionized workers provide, and they use them for crucial jobs.  But store workers are replacable, and so get no such treatment.  So far, they are just ad hominem<\/em> arguments about character, but that's an improvement from cursorial tu quoque.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Target stores are doing their best to fight the unions.  They've made some anti-union videos to be shown during training sessions.  They employed union actors to make the videos.  Here's the story in Salon.com, and the author, Justin Elliot, sees the tension: Oh, the irony! Target Corp., long locked in a battle with labor organizers, … Continue reading Ironic, in other words, tu quoque<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[135,1125,801,327],"class_list":["post-2968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tu-quoque","tag-ad-hominem-tu-quoque","tag-target","tag-tu-quoque-2","tag-unions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2968"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4662,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968\/revisions\/4662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}