Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Does Newt Pick His Nose?
I often listen to Catholic Internet stations as a captive audience because my wife listens to them. Today they were talking about how abortions have been shown to cause an increase in breast cancer. I suddenly realized that IF studies showed that abortions PREVENT breast cancer then these pro life groups would NOT recommend abortions as a health precaution. Obviously they have some agenda and are willing to cite anything which will persuade people to disapprove of abortion. Someone should coin a term to denote a strategy in rhetoric which PRETENDS to have one agenda (say prevention of breast cancer) but in reality has a totally different agenda. Different example: let's say you dislike Newt as much as I do. Then you are willing to marshal all sorts of arguments to discredit him even if those arguments are not pertinent to his fitness for office. Suppose you had photos of him picking his nose. Most people pick their nose at one time or another. The key to nose-picking is not to be noticed or get caught. You might then argue that Newt is an unsanitary person. BUT, if you found photos of Newt cleaning and sanitizing things, you would suppress that info BECAUSE your agenda is not really about sanitation but about bashing Newt.
