{"id":4609,"date":"2014-01-09T05:39:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T10:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4609"},"modified":"2014-01-09T06:39:44","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T11:39:44","slug":"outrageous-egregious-preposterous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4609","title":{"rendered":"Outrageous, egregious, preposterous"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
balance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve long maintained that there is a fallacy gap between right and left. \u00c2\u00a0Major right-leaning pundits (Will, Krauthammer, Brooks, and the legions of Am Spec bloggers) far exceed left-leaning pundits (Krugman, E.J.Dionne, and who else is there?) in basic<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0philosophy 101-style argumentative terribleness.<\/p>\n

The only evidence I have is my unscientific observations over the past nine or so years. \u00c2\u00a0For some, this view cannot possibly be correct, since “both sides do it” is a logical and metaphysical fact. \u00c2\u00a0It isn’t. \u00c2\u00a0But the fact that most people think this forces any treatment of fallacies, over-the-top rhetoric, etc., to insist on a balance which isn’t there. \u00c2\u00a0Provide your own examples.<\/p>\n

Now there is some, but only some, empirical support for my thesis. \u00c2\u00a0Professors \u00c2\u00a0Jeffrey Berry (Political Science) and Sarah Sobieraj (Sociology) of Tufts have written\u00c2\u00a0The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility<\/em><\/a>, which takes an empirical perspective on over-the-top political rhetoric. \u00c2\u00a0In an article in Politico, they write<\/a>:<\/p>\n

That said, the data from our analysis still show that the liberal outrage media is no match for the conservative side. Looking at low levels of outrage\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsay, two to five incidents per episode\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwe found that left- and right-leaning programs and blogs were roughly equal. However, as the number of outrage incidents per episode or post increased, the source was more and more likely to be conservative. This is most visible at the far end of the spectrum: The most outrageous cases (with 50 or more incidents per episode or post) come almost exclusively from conservative sources.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The outrage measure is itself kind of an interesting notion. But I’ll leave that for another time. In the meantime, check out the article (see if you can spot the balance-mongering!), and the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve long maintained that there is a fallacy gap between right and left. \u00c2\u00a0Major right-leaning pundits (Will, Krauthammer, Brooks, and the legions of Am Spec bloggers) far exceed left-leaning pundits (Krugman, E.J.Dionne, and who else is there?) in basic\u00c2\u00a0philosophy 101-style argumentative terribleness. The only evidence I have is my unscientific observations over the past nine … Continue reading Outrageous, egregious, preposterous<\/span> →<\/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":[1],"tags":[299,1825,1830,1824,580,1826,341,1827,1828,1829],"class_list":["post-4609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-balance","tag-equivalence","tag-fallacy-gap","tag-false-balance","tag-hacks","tag-jeffrey-berry","tag-punditry","tag-sarah-sobieraj","tag-the-outrage-industry","tag-the-outrage-industry-political-opinion-and-the-new-incivility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609","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=4609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4614,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609\/revisions\/4614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}