Monday, February 13, 2006

The Great Conversation vs.

....Nick Coleman is my topic today. I had the misfortune of reading his column yesterday (somebody else paid to put a Red Star-Tribune in my driveway), and his points were apparently that it was horrible and shocking that supporters of President Bush might also take out advertisements supporting the war in Iraq.

Maybe I should have recommended that you sit down before reading that. My apologies for the shock. :^)

Even more fun than that, however, were the massive jumps in logic employed. Coleman paraphrased, but did not quote, the commercials, and then countered them with a paraphrase of the claims of a liberal activist group. There was, to put it mildly, enough "wiggle room" in interpretation to maneuver an oil tanker without a pilot. Gary Larsen's "and then a miracle occurs" scientists have nothing on this Air America host.

And what does this have to do with the Great Conversation? Well, it points out the limits; you cannot engage in such when the other person insists on being the filter through which all data is processed.

5 comments:

Mark said...

For a moment, I thought you meant Norm Coleman. :^/

What's this "Air America" of which you speak? ;^)

Anonymous said...

Did you ever read his story in the Pioneer Press on his trip to the Central bookstore? It was in the context of an Arlon Linder column.

Bike Bubba said...

I just did...Coleman has all of the charm of, well, an Air America host, or the kid who just must say "nya nya nya" to whatever is said.

Not to mention that he pulls a neat rhetorical trick by implying that fundamentalists endorse firebombing at the beginning of his column, and then (perhaps to prevent a libel suit?) maladroitly "takes it back" at the end.

Someone needs to introduce Mr. Coleman to the principle of noncontradiction. Of course, that might spell the end of his career with the Strib..... :^)

Anonymous said...

I hadn't seen the recent Strib firebombing article until I tried to track down what you were talking about. That wasn't printed in the paper, was it?

Bike Bubba said...

The column on Iraq was February 12, and the one about firebombing was February 5, both in both the printed and online editions.