This post isn’t a debate, but it’s about debate. So this seems like the forum.
There’s been a tendency of late for conservatives from the Democratic right (i.e. Lieberman and his allies) to the far right to dig up random blog comments to discredit the lefty blogsphere. Since pretty much anyone can post comments at DailyKos or Atrios or the Huffington Post or wherever, this doesn’t say much.
Hence Drum’s Law, courtesy of Kevin Drum, which goes like this:
He held a contest to name the activity of trolling blog comments to find instances of such disagreeable behavior, and the winner was nutpicking, which I kinda like.
So if you’re nutpicking in an attempt to prove a point, Drum’s law says you’ve proven yourself wrong.
So what’s the point? Same as with Godwin, basically: if a particular form of bad debate behavior has a name which gains currency, then after awhile you can just use the name, rather than having to patiently explain, each time, why such behavior is self-defeating. In the case of Godwin, the widespread recognition of the law has made generic analogies to Hitler and Nazism almost immediately self-defeating in most online circles.
I’ve seen a number of examples of nutpicking lately; here’s one by Lieberman ally Lanny Davis, on the WSJ editorial page. Davis was able to find five blog comments, scattered over a year, that he considered anti-Semitic. (Media Matters for America demonstrated that one of the quotes was taken out of context, with the effect of entirely reversing its meaning, but the point of Drum’s Law is that even that’s beside the point.)
Anyhow, that’s nutpicking and Drum’s Law: a powerful new tool to dispense with a silly debating technique.
Hopefully, Drum’s Law will become obvious enough to anyone and everyone that it will achieve prevalence, which means that politicians will quit nutpicking in order to make their points…
It sounds a lot like what one of my sociology teachers liked to say: “If horrible things are in the news nightly, that’s a good thing. Means they’re scarce enough to be news. It’s when the news is all good stuff that I’ll start to worry.”
Bill O’Liely is a notorious proponent of nutpicking. Saw him just the other night (why do I watch? I don’t know, shut up, leave me alone…) pointing to some outrageous comment on Daily Kos (IIRC), phrasing it that this comment was “allowed” by DK, therefore it was DK.
I say fuhgedaboutit! Only an utter shitwit would be taken in by such a stratagem, and we aren’t going to change their minds anyway. The kind of shitwit who watches this stuff in the first instance. (I *said * I didn’t know why! Go away! Leave me alone! Don’t be a popinjay…!)
I wish I believed that. Fact is, the only thing that makes the SDMB a better forum for political expression than the mainstream media is the knowledge that if you come out with a whopper of some kind, you will be instantly be attacked for it by those who know it’s a whopper. But politicians and mainstream media commentators don’t have the instant response to deal with that we do – they can toss their whoppers into the media knowing that it will have an effect even if it’s an complete fabrication. There will be no one immediately on hand to cry “nutpicking” when it happens.
“Nutpicking” is a concept that should prove useful in online debate, however, so I’m all for it.
I wonder how many banned members we could have saved had we simply dismissed their sillier efforts as nutpicking rather than engaging them in long threads, and by such dismissals encouraging them to actually find legitimate discussion points to raise?
(Nah. Even with a word, the extreme partisans on both sides will continue to indulge themselves with the practice and soon there will be charges that the claim of nutpicking is simply being used to shut down legitimate discussion.)
“Nutpicking” might be too specific to qualify as a Law in itself. It’s really just a subcategory of the ever-popular dodge of singling out a sleaze or loony (Al Sharpton, Ann Coulter etc.) and declaring that that person is typical of one’s ideological opponents, or that since your opponents have not unanimously leaped to condemn him/her on all possible occasions, they either agree with or are facilitatating the sleazy/loony behavior.
The blog stuff is really ridiculous though, especially when you’re not even criticizing the blogger but someone who posted on the blog. Example: Cal Thomas and his column about the defeat of Joe Lieberman signifying the takeover of the Democratic Party by the “Taliban” wing.
Shit, he ain’t alone by a long shot! The Tighty Righty punditti are throwing shit fits and conniptions! “Well, Dems are doomed now, for sure, for sure!” says Hannity “Totally, to the max!” says Kristol.
Drum’s Law is a good and sensible law, which all intelligent or honest persons will obey automatically, even if they’re unaware that the law has an official name. However, we shouldn’t pretend that pointing out the triviality of nutpicking will discourage the tactic among conservative talking heads. The O’Reillys, Coulters, and Hannitys of the world thrive on inflating trivialites to distract attention away from important issues. Hence a multi-year temper tantrum about whether a montage in Bowling for Columbine was clearly labeled as a montage but no discussion about how to stop gun violence in America. Hence lengthy hysterics about Dan Rather’s memos but no talk about Dubya’s draft-dodging. Hence lots of chatter about stuffed animals in Reuters photos rather than about violence in the Middle East. These people, after all, are working for the GOP, the party of freedom fries and impeachment for a blow job.
Oh, and anyone who thinks that Godwin’s law has ended analogies to Nazism in political debate (online or offline) is engaging in a bit of wishful thinking.
In a conversation with the old farts I eat lunch with on Wednesdays, I failed to hear a debate gambit offered by someone, until after I was asked, “Is that true?” by a second person.
“Well, you can find it on the Internet, anyway.” I replied.
“Find what?” asked a third OFIELWOW.
“I don’t know.” I said, “But you can find it on the Internet.”
Air America’s network has quietly been expanding by leaps and bounds, so somebody must be listening. Keith Olbermann’s ratings seem to be doing pretty well. And IMHO a good deal of the popularity of guys like Colbert and Stewart is as stand-ins for non-comedic liberal commentators.
One can look on the rise of the lefty blogsphere as the filling of an underserved market for left-of-center commentary and analysis.
This post clearly demonstrates the general tendency of anti-intellectual right wing bookburning fascist types to wilfully ignore critical details, such as the distinction between “nutpicking” and “nitpicking.”
Currently, however, the audience is still sufficiently limited that only the better lefties can get air time. If the lefty audience gets large enough to demand ever more commentators, the quality of such commentators will begin to fall toward the level of Hannity and O’Reilly and we will begin to see more nutpicking on the left. MoveOn.org produced a fair amount of nutpicking during the last election and I suspect that if I could stomach reading it more often, I would find nutpicking, today, as well.
