Tuesday, August 04, 2009

False dilemmas

OK, once more with feeling. The reason we spend a little time in your editing class on logical fallacies is so we don't commit 'em in public -- as in the deck hed here, "Job security wins out over homeland security."

"Job security" and "homeland security" are not mutually exclusive. They aren't a zero-sum game. You can have neither. You can have both. When you suggest they're on a seesaw together, you're engaging in a false dilemma. (And while we're at it, let's stop saying"Gitmo," all right?)

Heds don't make people stupid, but they do give intellectual cover to the stupids. Let's not.

4 Comments:

Blogger Faldone said...

Amen on the false dilemma comments, but the camp has been called Gitmo by anyone in the Navy or Marine Corps since before anyone else ever heard of it, so I'd give up on that fight if I were you.

9:27 AM, August 04, 2009  
Blogger John Cowan said...

Except when singing "Guantanamera" (which means "woman from Guantánamo").

10:21 AM, August 04, 2009  
Blogger berlinvale said...

I reallly don't know what to think about all this sheet...

Vale from www.berlin49.de

5:27 AM, August 05, 2009  
Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

I don't mind when the military says "Gitmo", but when others call it that it seems to, I don't know, make it sound cozy and folksy and familiar. Plus it seems part of the fetishization of the soldier (oops, Soldier) that is so harmful to our society. (And I'm a veteran.)

2:40 PM, August 05, 2009  

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