{"id":5065,"date":"2017-02-10T09:57:17","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T14:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5065"},"modified":"2017-02-10T10:01:27","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T15:01:27","slug":"two-wrongs-of-straw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5065","title":{"rendered":"Two wrongs of straw"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Kellyanne Conway has had a hard couple weeks.\u00c2\u00a0 She had the ‘alternate facts<\/a>‘ brouhaha, then she had the case where she made up a massacre in Bowling Green<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 That then yielded a refusal by\u00c2\u00a0 a number of news outlets to interview her.\u00c2\u00a0 CNN’s ran for 48 hours<\/a>. She had a credibility deficit.<\/p>\n

Jonah Goldberg, over at National Review Online<\/em><\/a> has come to Conway’s defense saying that she is “good at her job, and the media hates her for it.”\u00c2\u00a0 You see, she’s regularly been sent on a tough mission – to defend Trump’s policies against a media set on interpreting everything they say in the worst possible light.<\/p>\n

\n

President Trump\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s surrogates, including Vice President Mike Pence, have mastered the art of defending straw-man positions<\/strong> that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reflect the actions and views of the president himself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Just for clarity’s sake, it’s worth noting that I don’t think Goldberg is holding that Conway must defend straw man positions<\/em>, but rather she must defend against straw men of her positions.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em>It has been a bit of a pet peeve of mine to see the language of informal logic abused, but this one is a doozy!\u00c2\u00a0 Regardless, the point is a fair one.\u00c2\u00a0 If folks have been getting the views and policies wrong, it’s the job of the communicators to set the record straight.<\/p>\n

But it’s here that Goldberg switches gears – you see, if you must defend against those who straw man in hostile fashion, then you, too, must fight dirty. And a lesson from history is a case in point.<\/p>\n

\n

In 2012, Susan Rice, Barack Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s national-security adviser, flatly lied on five Sunday news shows, saying that the attack on the Benghazi compound was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spontaneous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the direct result of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153heinous and offensive video.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d No one talked of banning her from the airwaves. Nor should they have. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a news flash for the news industry: Birds are gonna fly, fish are gonna swim, and politicians are gonna lie.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This, of course, is a curious line of argument, since the lies made the administration’s position (in both cases!)look considerably worse.\u00c2\u00a0 Who needs a straw manner in one’s opposition when one is doing such a bang-up job oneself?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kellyanne Conway has had a hard couple weeks.\u00c2\u00a0 She had the ‘alternate facts‘ brouhaha, then she had the case where she made up a massacre in Bowling Green.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 That then yielded a refusal by\u00c2\u00a0 a number of news outlets to interview her.\u00c2\u00a0 CNN’s ran for 48 hours. She had a credibility deficit. Jonah Goldberg, over … Continue reading Two wrongs of straw<\/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":[1109,44,204,12],"tags":[2100,1127,1111],"class_list":["post-5065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argument-from-double-standards","category-goldberg","category-specious-allegations-of-fallacy","category-straw-man","tag-kellyanne-conway","tag-straw-man-fallacy","tag-two-wrongs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065","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=5065"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5070,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions\/5070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}