Greg Sargent calls it one of the "Great moments in Fox News." Others call it a straw man. FOX ran the headline "
White House Fends Off Specter of Katrina in Federal Response to Oil Spill" yesterday -- for a story that included no real comparisons to Katrina. FOX is famous (or infamous) for their use of the rhetorical straw man "some people say" -- as in "some people say President Obama is a Communist" or "some people say President Obama was born in Kenya." Of course, it's not untrue, some people
do say these things. But those "some people" are ideologues, lunatics, and rightwing media blowhards. Some people also say that
the sun orbits the Earth, but no one gives a damn what these people think, because they're crazy.
That word you may be trying to remember from your school days right now is "
sophistry." Sophistry is -- in a broad sense -- the use of rhetorical tricks or near-logical arguments with the intention to mislead or deceive. Some people
do say that the oil spill in the gulf is Obama's Katrina, but those people work for an organization called "FOX News."
This is another little trick FOX pulls -- FOX News interviews FOX News and confirms for FOX News that FOX News agrees with what FOX News is reporting. Huckabee, like Hannity,
hosts a FOX News show. It's at this point that "sophistry" may be leaving your mind and that "circle jerk" is probably entering it... [
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