Krugman: Ad What?

August 10, 2010, 11:21 AM
Ad What?
A language thing: many people have been characterizing my attack on the Ryan roadmap as “ad hominem.” I think this represents a devaluation of the term.

As I’ve always understood it, ad hominem attacks involve attacking the person in general rather than what the person has to say on a specific issue. It means that instead of saying that Professor X seems to have played fast and loose with the data in his latest study, you say that Professor X’s mother was a hamster and his father smelt of elderberries; or, to take some non-random examples, you habitually refer to someone as “former Enron consultant Paul Krugman,” or invariably bring the size of Al Gore’s house into discussions of climate change.

Now, I didn’t do anything like that. I did point out that Ryan appears to be faking it in the selling of his plan — and I documented that assertion with specifics on the plan, on how he gamed the CBO process, and on the differences between how he talks about the deficit and what his plan would actually do.

That’s not ad hominem; it’s just being blunt.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/ad-what/

Of course the Limbeciles don't even have a clue what ad hominem means (is that French?), but if 4 Marriages Oxyrush tells them something, they'll repeat it.

He gets extra geek points for that alone.

:thumbsup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7zbWNznbs

:thumbsup: