On Fox and Friends this morning, co-host Steve Doocy wasted no time in attacking the announcement that Al Gore has been named a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. “Here’s something extraordinary,” Doocy sarcastically said. “What do Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, and that crazy Jimmy Carter have in common?” Co-host Gretchen Carlson responded, “They all won the Nobel Peace Prize?”
Fox then displayed a chyron of the last few winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, causing another co-host Brian Kilmeade, to complain: “There’s the last five winners — see Mohamed El Baradei. What do they have in common? I don’t know about the 2006 winner, but I will say 2005 and 2007 both anti-Bush.”
The Fox panel then turned its attack on An Inconvenient Truth, noting a recent court ruling by a British judge that Gore’s film should be accompanied by “guidance notes” when shown in schools. That ruling is now being challenged by schools and teachers. After reporting on the British controversy over Gore’s film, Doocy said:
The right side of the fence leads with ad hominem attacks [contemptuousness] like "that crazy Jimmy Carter;" hostile, demeaning jokes, “What do Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, and that crazy Jimmy Carter have in common?;” or something like asides, "a recent court ruling by a British judge that Gore’s film should be accompanied by ‘guidance notes’ when shown in schools." They are logical fallacies, invalid argument techniques known since the Ancient Greeks first studied logical thought. Attack the man rather than what the man says. False analogies – picking out some small piece of things that’s not solid and thereby invalidating the whole argument. And there’s a lot of stylistic technique – talking fast, interrupting, challenging parts of a sentence or argument before the other person reaches the end of their thought, non-verbal sneers, scowls, and mannerisms., changing the subject. It’s a monotonous panoply of techniques designed to draw attention away from whatever point is being made. Winning an argument doesn’t rest on logical argument, it rests on these techniques modelled on the playground bully. The question is not how the ‘contempt industry’ works. It’s obvious on first encounter. The questions are: Why do people do it? Why do people listen to it? Why make an assault on logic if you have something reasonable to say?
It would be easy to say that it’s because they don’t have anything reasonable to say. That would using the same techniques the right uses – starting with my conclusion and then wrapping some logic around it – a self-serving argument. Recently, the more I think about these questions, the more I think I know the answer. Two analogies come to mind. First, the Germany of the beginning of the twentieth century. Proud Germany and her allies in Central Europe went to war. The First World War was complex – the end of the Monarchal period in European history, but they didn’t yet know it. It was a remarkably silly war – fought at the behest of the warring cousins who populated Europes thrones. Partially because America entered the war, Germany and her allies got trounced in the end, and the war debt and reparations destroyed her economy, on top of her already injured pride and lost dreams of greatness. It created an environment for the insanity of Hitler that followed. The second analogy was the South I grew up in. The Civil War ended almost a century before I was born, but it was far from over. Known locally as the War of Northern Aggression, it’s roots dug deep into the soul. I was an adult before I realized that war was about Slavery. I thought it was about honor or something like that. The rhetoric of the Southern Racists, or even the more rational southerners had that same music I hear on Fox News or Talk radio.
Check out Bob Herbert’s column in the NYTimes Op-Ed today because he talks about what people choose to say about Al Gore then and now. Shame on his critics and look at the mess we are in because of his cohortsactions to get Bush his presidency.