Posted by
Jon on Thursday, April 24, 2008 1:38:37 PM
Well, I'm 4 days late and who really cares what Michael Moore thinks? but, he's, well,
not correct. Basically, he says that holding him responsible for what his pastor says is like holding him responsible for the the Pope's involvement with the Hitler Youth, because Ted Kennedy is Catholic and endorsed him. This is what we in the writing game call a "bad analogy". (In fairness, I only read the first few paragraphs, got really bored, read the last paragraph where he trots out the 3/5ths canard, and gave up)
In pursuit of my design of being the World's Biggest Dork, I even drew a picture of why it's a bad analogy (although I can't seem to upload pictures to this site. Interesting):
Louis Farakahn <-(choice)- Rev. Wright <-(choice)- Barack Obama <-(choice)- Ted Kennedy -(choice)-> Pope Benedict -(mandated)-> Adolph Hitler
First, these relationships are directional. It doesn't say much about the Rev. Wright that Obama chooses to go to his church; it says more about Obama that he chooses to go to his church. By the same token, it doesn't say much about Obama that his endorsed by Kennedy. So, is Obama to Farakah as Ted Kennedy to Hitler? That would be better, but there's still a problem. The fact that Pope Benedict was legally required to belong to the Hitler Youth, as every German of a certain age was, is different than the choice shown by Rev. Wright to praise Louis Farakahn.
I'll tick some other stuff that irritated me about this column: firstly, Clinton doesn't bring up Farakahn to discourage voters for Obama because he's a bad, black man, but because he's a bad man, period. This is exactly the kind of information that is very relevant. Now, do I think Clinton is as against Farakahn as she's pretending? No, but she should be. Secondly, the 3/5ths thing is, with the minimum wage, one of my biggest pet peeves. Blacks weren't 3/5ths of a human, but slaves were discounted in the census; that's not the same thing. Free blacks were counted in the census, (I think) indentured whites were discounted in the census, and the census only served to allocate congressional districts, not to establish "humanity". Take this scenario: slaves are counted in the census, and every 10,000 people get a congressman in the House of Representatives. Ten slave owners live near each other with big plantations, and they each own 1,000 slaves. THESE 10 SLAVE OWNERS WOULD GET THEIR OWN CONGRESSMAN, BECAUSE SLAVES CAN'T VOTE!!! And, they'd get an extra vote in the Electoral College, so slave states got more say say in the presidential election, too. It was the abolitionists that were against counting the slaves, not the racists, you dummy. Don't be confused by the fact that the Democrats were the ones trying to get the slaves counted; they're the same breed that later paid the KKK because they were attacking Republicans, who couldn't elect an anti-segregationist Adlai Stevenson, and who encourage minority drop-out rates through "affirmative action". They weren't the good guys.