10/05 Brendan: Vazsonyi's virtuoso spin performance

Has a new star been born?

Balint Vazsonyi, a columnist for the Washington Times and professional concert pianist, has written a column so insubstantial, factually incorrect and inflammatory that it could signal the arrival of a new force in the punditry.

The purpose of Vazsonyi's column is putatively to oppose reparations for slavery. But consider his argument against the proposal:

The attack on America may postpone it, but we will presumably have a debate about "reparations for slavery." It will be irrelevant... [N]o intellectually supportable argument exists in favor of such a claim. Period.

No, Vazsonyi is not going to be bothered with making arguments on behalf of his point - there's dissembling and stereotyping to do! As with many columnists, his purpose is to attack political opponents and inflame his readers. But his cutting-edge punditry goes farther than most by actually dispensing with an argument entirely.

Readers don’t have to wait long before Vazsonyi slides into an inflammatory and unsupportable claim:

The failure of the self-appointed, visible black leadership to line up with the rest of America in the days immediately following Sept. 11 stands in stark contrast to the outpouring of patriotic sentiment by black Americans across the land.

Were Vazsonyi to read a newspaper before smearing people as unpatriotic, he would have discovered that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation's most prominent black organization, has called on all Americans to unite against terrorism. Surely, the NAACP - run by former Congressman Kweisi Mfume - is a major part of the "self-appointed, visible" black leadership.

Note also the strategic vagueness of the smear - Vazsonyi never actually mentions who in the black leadership failed to "line up with the rest of America". He prefers instead to trigger irrational reactions by dissembling on the facts and implying that it is unpatriotic to dissent from popular sentiment.

After a long excursion into broad generalizations about groups of African Americans, Vazsonyi returns to reparations only briefly at the end of the piece, citing the proposal as a justification for an ugly sort of racial stereotyping:

[W]e are now faced with the proposition of wondering every time we look at a person of dark skin whether he is fixing to live off the money the rest of us has [sic] earned.

This statement plays on racial stereotypes by referencing the color of the person's skin - "dark", even though many dark-skinned people are not African-American - and the belief that blacks try to live off others rather than work.

Let us hope that Vazsonyi sticks to his day job - the reputed beauty of his performances stands in stark contrast to the woeful output of his pen.

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10/5/2001 10:36:40 AM EST |

10/04 Bryan: Coulter uses rhetorical tricks to manufacture support for deportation plan

Ann Coulter's latest column continues her irrational argument in favor of mass deportation, using what have become her staple rhetorical tricks to manufacture support for her plan to deport Muslim immigrants.

Coulter, whose syndicated column was dropped by the National Review after she suggested the US should invade and convert countries where people celebrated the events of September 11, begins with the suggestion that we deport "a million Muslim immigrants," expanding the target from the "Muslim visitors" and "aliens" she has previously advocated expelling. Coulter continues:

Any Senator (Teddy Kennedy) who is opposed to mass deportation of immigrants from suspect countries would be free to waive in as many potential terrorists as he could sign his name to. At least then we'd have true government accountability, rather than collective foot-dragging based on pristine tributes to civil rights.

The sentence utilizes one of Coulter's favorite tactics: injecting the name of a political opponent to rile up her readers. In this case the target is Kennedy who, since Coulter's idea has received no mainstream discussion, has yet to take a position on mass deportation. Nonetheless, hypothetically lining Kennedy up against her plan invokes an emotional reaction designed to convince readers to favor it.

Coulter justifies her position this way:

A mass deportation would ease the way for "ethnic profiling." If noncitizens from various suspect countries were under an order to leave, all security personnel would have grounds to look for potential violators of the law.

Everyone is profiling now anyway. . . . Ordinary Americans aren't going to die for political correctness.

Coulter is, of course, correct, in that criminalizing the presence of a good chunk of a single ethnicity automatically makes the rest of that ethnicity suspect. But her argument that "everyone" is already profiling based on race is not only insulting, it's a rhetorical trick which manufactures support for her argument out of thin air. Finally, suggesting that "political correctness" is standing in the way of American security is another emotional trope, designed to discredit civil rights protections without making an argument.

Coulter's appeal to emotion and fear intentionally inflames racial tensions and serves as a graphic illustration of how pundits use emotional incidents such as the tragedy of September 11 as an excuse for irresponsible rhetoric.

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Related links:
-Coulter advocates profiling of Arab "aliens," deportation (Bryan Keefer, 9/21)
-Is Rational Discourse Another Casualty of Tuesday's Attacks? (Ben Fritz, 9/17)
-Ann Coulter: The Jargon Vanguard (Brendan Nyhan, 7/16)

10/4/2001 07:31:29 AM EST |

10/03 Ben: New York Post blames Clinton's affair for terrorist attacks

As we have amply documented here on Spinsanity, many pundits and editorialists have taken advantage of the September 11 tragedy to push their favored agendas, connecting the two no matter how distant or disparate. The New York Post's editorial board took this tactic to a new low yesterday, however, when it not only connected President Clinton's disbarment from the Supreme Court to the terrorism, but suggested his affair with Monica Lewinsky was a contributing factor to it.

The former president's disbarment was not a surprise, as his Arkansas law license has already been suspended for providing misleading testimony under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Many pundits saw fit to comment on it, though, as is their right--it isn't every day an ex-President is disbarred from the Supreme Court.

The Post, however, attempted to smoothly segue from this "stain on a sad legacy" to the terrorist attacks, stating that the country is living "with the former president's fecklessness regarding international terrorism, too."

It goes on to note that Clinton didn't effectively crack down on terrorism following previous attacks, and that he is reported to have not paid enough attention to national defense. While these are fair criticisms, the Post then attempts to spread a false trope about Clinton by claiming he "tied the hands" of the CIA – even though the CIA has publically stated they have never refused to use a potential source or agent because of restrictions Clinton kept in place (as Bryan Keefer mentioned in his column earlier this week).

Not content with mere falsities, however, the Post tries to smoothly connect these criticisms to the disbarment with which it began its editorial:

In other words, the man's lack of self-control caused him to ignore his primary responsibility - keeping America and its citizens safe.

And the price for that irresponsibility is being paid now.

That's some dismal legacy.

Note how the Post simply assumes that A (Clinton's affair) caused B (his alleged inattention to national defense). There is, however, no evidence to suggest that it was his affair and the subsequent scandal that caused him to neglect national defense. Critics had been attacking Clinton from the beginning of his presidency, after all, for spending too much time on domestic policy and not enough on defense and international relations.

Even if we assume that Clinton's neglect of security was a contributing factor to Tuesday's attacks - a highly controversial assertion that the Post does not prove - there is simply no logical reason to connect it to his affair, or his subsequent disbarment. It certainly is a legitimate cause for shame to see an ex-president disbarred from the Supreme Court. But it's even more shameful to see editorial writers make a blatantly irrational attempt to link it to the death of thousands of innocent people.

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Related links:
Criticizing American Policy: Picking and Choosing What Is Legitimate (Bryan Keefer, 10/01)

10/3/2001 12:58:33 AM EST |

10/02 Brendan: Limbaugh smears Clinton with hypothetical

If the facts aren't good enough to rile up an audience, some pundits have a better strategy - make them up.

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is one of the worst offenders of this sort. Yesterday, while criticizing efforts by New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani to get his term in office extended, Limbaugh concocted a parallel scenario about President Clinton:

Just imagine, just imagine, it's December [2000] and this incident [the terrorist attacks of September 11] happens then. You know what would be happening, or you know what would have happened- Bill Clinton would have no doubt - and there would have been, it wouldn't have been just Clinton, I mean, you'd have had quite a few members of the Democratic Party saying for the purposes of continuity, and for the purposes of managing this incident, we need to - and because of the confusion that's reigning in Florida, and because of the indecision down there, because we're not sure who actually won, because of all of the controversy stemming from this and because of the fact that whoever does win is not going to have a mandate to do anything - that would have been one of the key elements of the charge - we need Bill Clinton to remain in office, we need somehow to come up with a special dispensation so that Bill Clinton can remain in office and lead the nation during this time of great crisis. So that Bill Clinton, of course, can realize his moment of greatness. You know that would be happening, you know that would have happened, just as it's happening now with Rudy.

This is an anti-Clinton fable, not a legitimate comparison. No one can know what would have happened. While it's fair to illustrate the point by saying Clinton could have tried to do the same thing if the attacks had happened in December, Limbaugh is going much further by pretending that he knows how Clinton and his allies would have acted. He later started to say that Clinton actually wishes the attacks had happened during his term, but then admitted that "[t]he President himself has not so much as said it".

In the third hour of his show, Limbaugh returned to the subject for yet another propagandistic slam at his favorite target:

[Y]ou know that there would be a move afoot - I don't think, I don't know that Clinton would allow his fingerprints to be on this - [but] you know that the Mustafa Carvilles and the Lanny Davises and all the other sycophants would be saying: "With all this trouble... we think we ought to just do whatever we can to keep Bill Clinton in the Oval Office until all this is resolved."

Again, Limbaugh is simply making things up - and also note his second use of "Mustafa Carville", which offensively attempts to smear Democratic strategist James Carville as somehow disloyal and affiliated with terrorists simply by giving him a Middle Eastern name. I previously documented Limbaugh introducing the term last week. It appears he's making it into a disreputable habit.

This kind of ad-hoc psychologizing has become the stock in trade of our punditocracy, which often prefers to create twisted fantasies than to deal with the real issues our country faces.

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Related links:
-Limbaugh hypocrisy and ethnic slurs (Brendan Nyhan, 9/25)

10/2/2001 09:07:21 AM EST |

10/01 column - Criticizing American Policy: Picking and Choosing What Is Legitimate

By Bryan Keefer

Since the tragedies of September 11, pundits have mounted numerous attacks on the legitimacy of opinions that conflict with their own. Particularly troubling is the assertion that criticizing American foreign policy is beyond the pale and that making such criticisms amounts to blaming America for the terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, some of these same pundits - such as Andrew Sullivan and Charles Krauthammer - are quite comfortable criticizing aspects of our military policies. This hypocrisy is nothing less than an attempt to define the terms under which US policy may be criticized. (read the whole column)

10/1/2001 06:40:12 AM EST |

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