If you ever needed a real-world demonstration of the term "straw man," I give you Dinesh D'Souza's "How Obama Thinks." Any article that actually comes right out and says, "Now here's a mindreading act," in the title deserves all the respect you'd give the most obvious and ham-handed charlatan. Leaving behind even the pretense of logic, D'Souza engages in supposition disguised as fact and engages in a political hit-job masquerading as some sort of deep psychological analysis. I won't bore you with the details, but the broadstrokes are that Obama hates America because his father supposedly did -- the end. It is truly a loathsome piece editorial malpractice -- even for the editor of the National Review -- and the editorial board of Forbes should immediately begin a decade of self-flagellation to atone for ever allowing it to be published in their pages. Seriously, it's just that stupid/transparently dishonest. It makes a Sarah Palin Facebook entry look like something out of the Encyclopedia Britannica.So it shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that Newt Gingrich is a big fan of the piece. Gingrich went completely off the rails some time ago and now spends his time ranting on news shows, where he's inexplicably a frequent guest.
Actually, on second thought, it's not so inexplicable; Newt Gingrich is no more mad than any other "conservative" these days, so I suppose he's just as good as any other. They all say pretty much the same things, so they're nearly interchangeable. Like D'Souza, they all love to hate the straw man...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
