Chez and I got into a heated debate on Facebook over a post he wrote in which he claimed there are "Neanderthals" on both sides who parse the definition of "rape" -- just like Todd Akin. My Thursday column is a response to his post, the debate and his follow-up column yesterday:
One of the prerequisites for being a political writer/junkie is a natural and sometimes frustrating inability to keep my yapper shut. Admittedly, I have a big mouth.
Nevertheless, being an outspoken critic of current events and politics is especially dangerous when I observe a friend, family member or colleague making a flawed or downright wrong argument -- especially when the flaw is something that, in my view, is not only a self-defeating flaw of liberalism, but also an insufferable hobby horse of the timid press corp.
Specifically, I'm talking about the logical fallacy known as the false equivalence, or what I sometimes refer to as the "both sides meme." Simply put, false equivalence is a deliberate correlation of two disparate things in order to suggest they're the same.
Most recently, I read a blog post by my friend and podcast partner, Chez Pazienza, in which this fallacy happened to have been the lead. So I couldn't help myself. I had to challenge Chez on Facebook regarding his use of the both sides meme. Continue reading here.