The Moar You Know
Christopher Hitchens, that charming bastard that he is, recently had the following to say about claims Fort Hood murderer Major Nidal Malik Hasan was a victim of bullying at the hands of his fellow soldiers:
"No doubt he came in for a taunt or two, but if you want to avoid that, then don't express contempt for your fellow soldiers while in uniform. Black Americans used to be segregated. Jewish recruits were mercilessly hazed, as were men or women who looked as if they might be gay. Did any of them ever come up with an act of mass murder as a response? Did any of them ever offer a black or Jewish or gay ideology in justification of it? Would they have earned sympathy and understanding if they had? By the time the mushy "pre-post-traumatic" school was done with the story, Maj. Hasan was not just acquitted of being a bad Muslim. He was more or less exonerated of having even done a bad deed."
Quoted from this article. Note the rhetorical technique at work here. The suggestion Hasan may have been being victimised has been morphed, in the space of one paragraph, into the claim that what he did was in no way reprehensible. This is known as a straw man argument. I don't think even the most liberal commentator would hint that maybe Hasan's victims 'had it coming', yet this is exactly what Hitchens is making the argument out to be. By doing so, he can appear to have given the counter-consideration its due, and dismissed it in a manner befitting such a ludicrous claim. It's a bait and switch: while the audience is distracted by the bright, noisy and irrelevant claims about Jews and other minorities, the real point is quietly removed and replaced with a doppelganger made of straw, which is then dismissively set alight.
Taking a look at the straw man, though, Hitchens' argument doesn't really hold much water even against this faux-argument. Is the best he can do really 'look, the Jews and blacks and gays all just took the abuse on the chin, why can't Muslims do the same? Just bend over for a bit until the ubermensch finds another anomalous minority to pick on.' No one's ever accused Hitchens' of being a sensitive type, but I sometimes tend to forget what a neo-conservative douchebag he can be sometimes.
Anyway, thus ends my anti-Hitchens ranting disguised as an episode of 'Better Know A Bad Journalistic Technique'.
"No doubt he came in for a taunt or two, but if you want to avoid that, then don't express contempt for your fellow soldiers while in uniform. Black Americans used to be segregated. Jewish recruits were mercilessly hazed, as were men or women who looked as if they might be gay. Did any of them ever come up with an act of mass murder as a response? Did any of them ever offer a black or Jewish or gay ideology in justification of it? Would they have earned sympathy and understanding if they had? By the time the mushy "pre-post-traumatic" school was done with the story, Maj. Hasan was not just acquitted of being a bad Muslim. He was more or less exonerated of having even done a bad deed."
Quoted from this article. Note the rhetorical technique at work here. The suggestion Hasan may have been being victimised has been morphed, in the space of one paragraph, into the claim that what he did was in no way reprehensible. This is known as a straw man argument. I don't think even the most liberal commentator would hint that maybe Hasan's victims 'had it coming', yet this is exactly what Hitchens is making the argument out to be. By doing so, he can appear to have given the counter-consideration its due, and dismissed it in a manner befitting such a ludicrous claim. It's a bait and switch: while the audience is distracted by the bright, noisy and irrelevant claims about Jews and other minorities, the real point is quietly removed and replaced with a doppelganger made of straw, which is then dismissively set alight.
Taking a look at the straw man, though, Hitchens' argument doesn't really hold much water even against this faux-argument. Is the best he can do really 'look, the Jews and blacks and gays all just took the abuse on the chin, why can't Muslims do the same? Just bend over for a bit until the ubermensch finds another anomalous minority to pick on.' No one's ever accused Hitchens' of being a sensitive type, but I sometimes tend to forget what a neo-conservative douchebag he can be sometimes.
Anyway, thus ends my anti-Hitchens ranting disguised as an episode of 'Better Know A Bad Journalistic Technique'.