Pitiful Ad Hominem chief response to Scottie

From the Rightwing “Newsbusters”:

McClellan’s Publisher a Liberal: Advances Soros & Slams Limbaugh

Peter Osnos, who wrote Wednesday that he “worked very closely” with Scott McClellan on McClellan’s new book published by PublicAffairs which Osnos founded, is a liberal whose publishing house is affiliated with the far-left The Nation magazine and the publisher of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. PublicAffairs has a roster of authors who are nearly all liberals and/or liberal-leaning mainstream media figures, including six books by far-left bank-roller George Soros.

George Soros being the nuclear bogeyman of the Right, of course, a commie-jihadist-nazi-leftwing pinko with teeth the size of a T Rex’s.

The author, Brent Baker, also points out that Osnos “hailed the late left-wing columnist Molly Ivins.”

Yes, that’s right: he said nice things about a deceased columnist. Inconceivable!

From Nizkor’s “Logical Fallacies“:

Translated from Latin to English, “Ad Hominem” means “against the man” or “against the person.”

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of “argument” has the following form:

1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A’s claim is false.

The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).

Example of Ad Hominem:

1. Scot McClellan’s book states that the White House mislead the American people about the threat posed by Iraq, and the involvement of high level staffers in the Plame leak case. The book is published by a liberal, whose publishing house is affiliated with other liberals, including Soros; therefore the book is false.

From Stephen’s guide to logical fallacies, Proof for Ad Hominem:

Identify the attack and show that the character or circumstances of the person has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the proposition being defended.

What George Soros or Molly Ivins has to do with the facts laid out in McClellan’s self-serving expose is clear only to hyperbolically small-minded ideologues like Brent Baker.