IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE AWESOMENESS AND INTELLECTUAL RIGOR OF RACHEL MADDOW IN ACTION AND GET A TASTE OF WHY SHE IS ONE OF THE SMARTEST, MOST ASTUTE COMMENTATORS AROUND, CHECK OUT THIS CLIP.
Rachel begins by pointing out different ways a person can defend the point they are making without actually presenting evidence to support the claim.
One way is called ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM—avoiding the point by calling your opponent a nasty name. He or she must be wrong because he/she is a dirty rotten _______.
Another way is called ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM. This is avoiding the point by claiming that more people agree with your position so you must be right.
Both of these methods of argument are LOGICAL FALLACIES. They are not TRUE.
Rachel Maddow took on Bill O'Reilly again Friday night, responding to his syndicated column in which he called her a "far-left loon" and an "uber-leftist" and wrote that her claims about Fox News are presented "without a shred of evidence."
"This time the case against me is in his nationally-syndicated column, which I'm sure is read by millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people," Maddow said, mocking O'Reilly's over-reliance on TV ratings to dismiss arguments against him.
O'Reilly's column was specifically in response to Maddow's appearance with David Letterman earlier in the week, during which she called Fox News "slimeballs" and repeated her case that the network stokes white viewers' fears about black people.
O'Reilly called that claim a "preposterous...paranoid, dishonest rant" and wrote that Maddow presented it "without a shred of evidence."
Maddow called that assertion "stupid" and told O'Reilly, "you may not like that diagnosis of what Fox has been up to, but to say there's no evidence...that's bullpucky."
She then presented examples -- ranging from Shirley Sherrod to ACORN to Van Jones to O'Reilly literally saying that white people prefer smaller government while black people want the government to expand to redistribute wealth -- to back up her claim.
"Remember, Mr. O'Reilly says there is not a shred of evidence that Fox News hypes stories about scary black people taking white people's stuff," she said.
"I am not interested in playing cable news insult ping-pong with Mr. O'Reilly, but as much as he keeps insisting that I'm no one worth arguing with, that I'm an 'uber-leftist' -- he called me that in his column -- and a loon twice now, and a slightly larger percentage of 1% of the population watches his show than the proportion of 1% of the population that watches my show, for all he complains about how unimportant I am, my criticism that Fox News scares white people on purpose to politically benefit conservatives -- damn the consequences for the country -- that criticism appears to have struck a nerve over at Fox. It appears to have gotten under Mr. O'Reilly's skin."
She concluded. "Good."
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Sunday, August 8th 2010 at 3:23PM
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