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[Previous entry: "In which objectivity goes out the window"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Another look at the case for war"] 18 July 2003: "Bevvies all round"
There are moments that I thank my parents for giving me a name which, no matter how unpronouncable it might be to speakers of the English language (and damn near every other language), is at least unique. There are many voices in the realm of internet political opinion, and I'm having an increasingly hard time telling the various Pollacks apart from the Pollards. I can already hear the Europhiles choking on their Sancerre.At the time, I dismissed this characterisation as "cheap populism" and thought no more about it, until I found this line in Pollard's (that's Stephen Pollard, not some other Pollard) piece: I derived a huge thrill from choosing as my book of the year, a while ago, the collected columns of Richard Littlejohn. Sad, maybe, but the thought of the juice bar lefties choking over the carrot and ginger smoothies cheered me up no end.Emphasis mine. Why, I do believe I perceive a trend here: "the [insert adherents of political opinion one disagrees with] must be choking on their [insert poncy drink] as a direct result of being confronted with my brilliance!" Needless to say, there are so many crimes against the generally accepted rules of reasoned debate that it's difficult to know where to start. Clearly there's at least one argumentum ad hominem (abusive) in there, combined with an argumentum ad populum, not to mention the astonishing amount of self-satisfaction that goes into proclaiming that those of a different political persuasion must be "choking" on their drinks as a result of the validity of one's insights. More likely, any choking which is actually taking place is at the sheer presumptiousness of the writer in question (so that would a cum hoc ergo proter hoc fallacy as well, assuming any actual choking were taking place). That said, this tendency to ascribe a liking for poncy drinks to one's political opponents raises a question. Assuming red-blooded Conservatives disdain these poncy, effeminate, nancy-boy drinks, what do they drink themselves? After cracks like that, it had better be something rough and manly, somethin' that'll put a hurtin' on ya, as Alton Brown would put it. Moreover, it would have to be something that no left-winger would ever drink; considering Christopher Hitchens' reputation, the field of possible candidates has got to be awfully narrow. Oh, why bother pondering the subject? It seems pretty obvious to me that this "people choking on their poncy drinks" thing is worthy of its own variant on Godwin's Law, i.e. it's a debating tactic which is so obviously cheap that its use should instantly disqualify its user from any given civilised discussion. The New Statesman has, by all accounts, gone downhill over the past two decades. Losing Stephen Pollard, however, can only be to the paper's benefit. |
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