Fallacies in Argument

The political blog I chose to follow was Wonkette.com. It seemed to have a wide range of political topics. I wasreally surprised at the posts I read. I couldn't believe the number of fallaciesused by those who posted.

The first post that caught my eye was "World's Least-Enthused Heckler Still Manages to Ruin Toledo Candidate's Speech." The main fallacies I saw in this post were the use of an Ad Hominem argument and what I think may be a "straw man" attack. The topic is about a heckler that ruined a political cadidate's speech, but the writer started attacking the candidate himself, rather than talking bout the heckler. I'm not sure if that falls into "straw man" or not. I do know for sure, though, that the writer used an Ad Hominem argument against the candidate. He made comments on the candidate's youthful appearance, talking about him running for "high school president," rather than mayor, to weaken the candidate and his credibility.

The next post that caught my attention was "The Republican Inappropriate Behaviors Olympic Ceremony." The author of this post used faulty analogy to make her points. By exaggerating the situation through analogy, she shows a strong negative attitude toward those she was writing about.

Another post, "Spanky Cumsack Resigns from California State Assembly," uses a fallacy that I can't quite identify. California legislator Mike Duvall resigned from the assembly due to inappropriate comments he made. He admitted his mistake and resigned, yet the writer still wrote out against him, making stupid comments about him and insulting him. I'm not sure what type of fallacy this would be considered. Straw man? Non sequiter? Maybe even dogmatism? Probably a combination of all of them.

One more argument that stood out to me was "Dick Cheney Purchases Building, For Torture, On College Campus." The writer of this post is guilty of the fallacy of making a non sequiter argument. The post examines the issue of Dick Cheney donating money to build a new center for international students at the University of Wyoming. The author writes about the building being a building of torture, because it is for international students, and because Dick Cheney supports the Iraq war and "harsh interrogation techniques." It doesn't make sense logically. Even if does support torture and does not like foreigners, donating money for a center for international students, while questionable, does not make the donation and the development of the new center a bad thing.

While examining these posts for fallacies in the various arguments, I really began to realize how significant they are, and how often they are used. I always knew people used these techniques in arguments, but I never really paid attention to them before. This has really opened my eyes to the importance and significance of fallacies in argument.