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David N. Mayer

Ad Hominem II

Earlier this month, in my March 9 entry, “Ad Hominem,” I listed a dozen or so individuals – people in the news, in politics or popular culture – who (in my opinion) are “so despicable and/or superficial as to be living caricatures of themselves or other human beings” and who thus warranted being the subjects of ad hominem attacks.  In this entry, I’m adding a few more individuals and then listing groups, or types, of persons who also deserve to be so categorized. 

n    Bill O’Reilly

This pompous asshole so epitomizes shameless demagoguery that if you look up “Demagogue, shameless” in the dictionary, you ought to see his picture.  O’Reilly uses the marketing slogan “No-Spin Zone” to describe his popular Fox News Channel program, O’Reilly Factor, but that slogan clearly is false advertising:  the show is all “spin” – O’Reilly’s spin – which consists largely of the host’s simple-minded, populist solutions to social problems that invariably involve appeal to negative emotions (fear, envy, anger, or grief) as well as defamatory attacks on persons whose only crime is that they provide convenient scapegoats for O’Reilly. 

Consider, for example, O’Reilly’s recent vilification of Franklin County, Ohio Judge John A. Connor, whom O’Reilly branded “the worst judge in the USA” for sentencing a sex offender to what many people believe to be too lenient a punishment.  (The case involved a 46-year-old man, Andrew S. Selva, whom Judge Connor in December sentenced to a year of house arrest and five years of probation for sexually abusing two boys.  According to local news reports, Selva originally was indicted on 22 counts of rape and gross sexual imposition, but in September 2004 those charges were dismissed by county prosecutors, who negotiated to have Selva plead guilty to two sexual-battery charges that did not require prison.  When the plea-bargain deal was presented to Judge Connor, neither the prosecutor nor the prosecution’s expert witnesses recommended imprisonment for Selva, a first-time offender who had been under intensive supervision and sex-offender counseling and who had been clean for three years, having committed no more criminal sexual acts since November 2002.  Thus, under the facts of the case, Judge Connor did not abuse his discretion in imposing the sentence he did impose on Selva; he was following the rule of law.)  To demagogues like O’Reilly, however, neither facts nor the rule of law matter:  all that matters is the easy opportunity the case gave O’Reilly to rail against not only the judge but anyone who dared question O’Reilly’s irrational, knee-jerk response.   When Columbus-area talk-show host Joel Riley (from WTVN, 610 AM radio) appeared on O’Reilly’s show March 16^th, to discuss Riley’s interview with Judge Connor, O’Reilly jumped in before Joel finished explaining the judge’s side and accused him of “being OK with a guy raping two little boys.”  That’s “No-Spin”?  Bullshit!       

n    Political Demagogues

As bad as Bill O’Reilly’s demagoguery is, celebrities like O’Reilly might have some influence on public opinion but pale in comparison with the most dangerous demagogues, those who hold political power – those politicians, from both major American political parties, who use their demagoguery to enact laws that abridge everyone’s freedom.

Politician demagogues often use their “bully pulpit” (or perhaps I should say “bullshit pulpit”) to vilify individuals as scapegoats, to rationalize their simplistic, superficial, and invariably wrong-headed “solutions” to the public-policy “problems” that they invent.  So, for example, when gasoline prices rise (mostly as a result of wrongheaded government energy policies), politicians blame the price increase on “oil company profits” and call for higher taxes (on the “windfall profits”) and prosecutions for “price-gouging.”  Or when a TV network broadcasts Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during halftime of the Super Bowl, politicians rail about “indecency” on the airwaves and give the FCC greater censorship powers.

One of the most egregious recent examples of politicians’ demagoguery has been the response to the now-failed deal for Dubai Ports World to manage several major American ports.  Politicians from both major parties – that is, both “Demopublicans” and “Replicrats” – immediately jumped on the issue, seeing it as an easy one both to score political points against the Bush administration and to appeal to the jingoistic emotions (and anti-Arab prejudices) of their constituents.  (For background, see my previous entry on “Port whining” in “B.F.D.,” Feb. 23.)  Now politicians in Congress are wedding this new jingoism to old-fashioned protectionism, in proposing to ban foreign companies from owning or managing “critical infrastructure.”  Rep. Duncan Hunter (R.-Calif.), chairman of the Housed Armed Services Committee, supports a bill forbidding foreign-owned companies from possessing or operating any “asset that is included on the national-defense critical-infrastructure list.”  And the “Great Bitch” herself (the junior U.S. senator from New York, who’s a category by herself in my previous “Ad Hominem” blog) has proposed a bill that would prevent state-owned foreign companies from managing, controlling, or owning U.S. port operations.  Never mind the facts that there was no real threat to national security from the DPW ports deal and that there’s been no proven danger of any other threat from other foreign investments in the U.S.  (Indeed, historically, it’s been foreign capital investment that helped develop the U.S. into the world’s richest and most powerful nation.)  If political demagogues can find an opportunity to further limit freedom of trade, they’ll jump on it.

n    And Others

Finally, there are whole groups – many types – of persons who deserve ad hominem attack.  Some of these people are truly evil; others are merely idiots:

• Everyone who thinks their religious beliefs entitle them to commit murder or theft, or to dictate to other persons how they live their lives

• Everyone who thinks their religious beliefs entitle them to demand that government, acting as their agent, commit murder or theft, or dictate to other persons how they live their lives

• Animal-rights nuts who think that human life isn’t special

• Social conservatives who confuse homophobic bigotry with “family values”

• Environmentalist “wackos” (to use Rush Limbaugh’s apt phrase) to whom junk science is their religion, and who think their beliefs entitle them to demand that government dictate how people live their lives

• Both social conservatives and “feminazis” (to use another apt Limbaugh phrase, for anti-individualist feminists) who would have government legislate their sexual prudery

• People who identify themselves as a victim, because of their ethnicity, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation

• Anyone who thinks it’s OK for government to dictate the wages or benefits Wal-Mart must pay its employees

• College and university professors who say they support “diversity” but who classify people according to their race, and who say they support academic freedom but who would prohibit “offensive” speech on campus

• Leftists who demonize as “neoconservative” anyone who doesn’t share their pacifist ideology, and conservatives who demonize as “liberal” anyone who broadly supports individual freedom

• Ex-U.S. presidents who keep sticking their noses (or, in the case of “Slick Willy,” other body parts) in politics and in international diplomacy

• Politicians whose “positions on the issues” are simply the opposite of what rival politicians say

• Demagogues, of either the left or the right, who exploit negative feelings like envy (particularly resentment against achievement) or fear (particularly anti-business prejudice or paranoia about corporations); and who thus, for example, bash wealthy, successful businessmen simply because they’re wealthy or successful or blame high gas prices on “price-gouging by the oil companies”

• Anyone who thinks that one person’s needs should be a moral claim on another person’s ability

• Beggars, panhandlers, and bums (those whom bleeding-heart wimps call “the homeless”) who have the audacity to demand, as alms, the money other people have earned through their productive efforts

• Anyone who thinks there is such a thing as a free lunch – and who is so shameless as to demand free lunch as an “entitlement”

• People who disrespect other people’s property rights in any way whatsoever

• Drivers who do not use their turn signals before changing lanes or slowing down to turn

• Other discourteous persons, including restaurant patrons who talk loudly on cell phones and theater patrons who talk during the movie or performance

• Anyone who regularly uses the following words or phrases:  infrastructure, postmodern, family values, decency, step up to the plate, team player, share your feelings, social justice, public interest, corporate responsibility, stewardship, homeland security, and make a difference

• Grocery-store customers who use the “12 items or less” check-out lanes even though they have more than 12 items in their carts, and grocery stores so ignorant of proper English usage that they do not understand the phrase should be “12 items or fewer”

• Anyone who believes that crime is caused by “poverty,” “hopelessness,” or “too many guns in society”

• Anyone who believes that government controls on gun ownership or possession really help to reduce crime

• Anyone who believes that government prohibition (i.e., the “War on Drugs”) really helps to reduce drug abuse

• Anti-abortion activists who would not allow a rape victim to terminate her pregnancy even in its earliest stage, and abortion-rights activists who would allow a pregnant woman to murder her unborn child even in the latest stage of her pregnancy

• Men and women who engage in heterosexual sex without assuming the risk (and awful responsibility) of bringing a child into the world

• All sexually-active people – male or female, heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual – who think it’s “unfair” that they’ve become infected with STDs after having unsafe sex

• Trial lawyers who deny the existence of frivolous lawsuits, who oppose sensible tort reform on the grounds that it would “deprive victims of their rights” – and who hide the fact that their contingency-fee arrangements with their clients give them a one-third interest in those lawsuits

• Wimps who think so little of justice that they oppose the death penalty no matter how heinous the crime

• Anyone who thinks that It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp, Three 6 Mafia’s rap song from Hustle & Flow, deserved the Oscar it received for “best original song”

• Everyone (especially Motion Picture Academy voters) who thinks that voting for Crash as “best picture” proves they’re not “racist”

    | Link to this Entry | Posted Thursday, March 30, 2006 | Copyright © David N. Mayer