[Dean's World] Dave Schuler: Gripes About Public Discourse

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Schuler:
Gripes About Public Discourse
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1188743686.shtml


   I've got a lot of gripes about the tone and structure of public
   discourse these days. How about you? There are the obvious things: the
   name-calling, the boosterism, reflexive opposition, and so on. But
   there are some things that bug me even more. Here are a few.

   Boot-strapping

   The general form that this take is "I am an authority on A; therefore,
   you should believe/accept/respect my opinion about B". The most
   conspicuous offenders in this area are show business personalities.
   "I'm a movie actor; therefore, take my advice on China/global
   warming/Iraq, etc.!" There's another form of this that I find even
   more infuriating: "I've been writing about A for a long time; A is a
   little like B; therefore, I'm an authority on B!". Journalist Thomas
   Friedman is a conspicuous example of this.

   Dont' let the complaint about lack of editting in blogs compared to,
   say, newspapers fool you. I think the real gripe that newspaper
   columnists (or reporters or editors who want to be columnists i.e.
   practically all of them) have against blogging is that it makes
   bootstrapping much harder. There's almost bound to be somebody out
   there blogging who actually knows something about the subject and is
   willing to call you on it.

   Bait and switch

   This one really bugs me. In this trope the advocate frequently makes a
   genuinely strong, convincing case for the problems with X. The
   advocate then proposes solution Y. The problem is that Y may have only
   a vague relationship to the problems the advocate made in making his
   or her case. That was my gripe with the Iraq Study Group report: they
   did a really excellent job in identifying the problems in Iraq. Their
   solutions addressed resolving those problems only indirectly.

   You won't have any difficulty in finding other examples of bait and
   switch. It's used in practically every issue that we face. "Our army
   is broken! We've got to withdraw from Iraq." If the problem is that
   our army is broken, the solution is fixing our army. "Global warming
   is causing climate change! The U. S. must reform its economy (but
   China doesn't need to)." That's a non sequitur unless America's
   putting changes in place can prevent global warming's causing climate
   change without China's cooperation. That's far from obvious. "Some
   African Americans are trapped in institutionalized poverty. Give
   subsidies to African Americans who aren't trapped!" Another non
   sequitur. "We must end the war in Iraq. Withdraw American forces".
   That's true only if the war will end as a consequence of American
   forces withdrawing. The examples of bait and switch are legion.

   Got any pet gripes about public discourse of your own?

   Cross-posted from [1]The Glittering Eye

References

   1. http://theglitteringeye.com/?p=3144