Unable to discuss facts in any logical, coherent way, or even engage in civil discourse, the modern left has two modes of argumentation: tu quoque and ad hominem. The former translates roughly as “and so are you,” while the latter means to attack the person instead of the point. In logic, both of these tactics are considered the lowest form of debate, but for the intellectually bankrupt and emotionally overwrought left, they’re the only tactics they have.
Exhibit A — a masterpiece of the genre — comes in the form of this pre-Father’s Day column from Colbert King of the Washington Post: “On Father’s Day, hypocrites are all in the family.” And away we go:
Family, marriage and the contribution of fathers come together as topics for reflection on Father’s Day. So I’d like to know why Barack Obama, a husband and a father in a family structure that encompasses bonds deemed essential to our society, is constantly and savagely attacked by conservative leaders whose personal circumstances undermine the family values they espouse?
Consider Obama: Raised by a single mother in a middle-class family where hard work and education were watchwords, Obama graduated from two of the top schools in the country, Columbia University and Harvard Law School. His legal scholarship was recognized when he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He married and, equally important, has stayed married to Michelle Robinson, a Princeton graduate and Harvard Law alumna. He lives with his wife, two children and his mother-in-law. Obama: constitutional law professor, civil rights lawyer, state legislator, U.S. senator, 44th U.S. president, family man.
Let’s set aside for the moment the misrepresentation that the Community Organizer was ever a “constitutional law professor,” when he was more a gloried graduate teaching assistant than a real professor. Let’s also overlook his background as state senator “present,” and his very brief tenure in the U.S. Senate — a seat he won not in the general election against the hapless Alan Keyes but earlier, by taking out both his primary challenger and the real Republican candidate through the mysteriously obtained (hello, David Axelrod!) divorce records of his opponents.
Having set up an amazingly irrelevant straw man, even by the low standards of the left, King proceeds to demolish it:
Now let’s turn to Obama’s foremost critics: Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, Newton Leroy Gingrich and Sarah Palin.
There follows the usual dreary litany, gleefully and lovingly detailed, of Limbaugh’s checkered marital past, the former Speaker’s multiple wives and Palin’s extended family, as if any of that had anything to do with the very real political differences between left and right when it comes to Obama. Which, of course, it doesn’t.
But to the left, the personal is always political and in a bar fight (which is how they view politics) any weapon to hand is legitimate. Never mind that two can play at this game: from a 1954 Time Magazine story about the family of the current Speaker of the House, Annunciata d’Alesandro Pelosi:
Joy & Sorrow. The day of their return to Baltimore, they [Pelosi’s parents] learned that son Roosey, along with 15 other youths, had been arrested on a charge of taking two girls, ages 13 and 11, on an all night joy ride and keeping them in a furnished flat for a week. He was acquitted of the rape charge, but out of the investigation of this case grew a perjury indictment against 21-year-old Roosey. But Tommy confidently announced his candidacy for governor ten months before the primary.
The whirlwind next struck at Tommy’s parking garages and in a few gusts forced him to quit the gubernatorial race. A contractor named Dominic Piracci, who seemed to have a corner on the city’s garage-building business, was convicted of fraud, conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Piracci and Tommy had long been friends, even before Piracci’s daughter, Margie, married Tommy D’Alesandro III.
Piracci had erased some names from his ledgers. Among the names deleted: Nancy D’Alesandro [Pelosi’s mother]. On the witness stand in Piracci’s trial, Nancy admitted getting six checks totaling $11,130.78 from Piracci. But she swore that $1,500 of it was a gift to their newly wed children, Tommy III and Margie. The rest. she claimed, Piracci lent her to pay off debts incurred in her feed business and a venture with a skin softener called Velvex.
Never mind as well that there is an alternative-universe version of the Obama hagiography and, most important, please forget all about the hitherto unprecedented malevolence and incompetence of the current administration, a deadly combination from which the country will suffer for years. No, what matters is Limbaugh’s four wives and Sarah’s sister-in-law.
So in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen — Levi Johnston!
And the whereabouts of 19-year-old Levi on this Father’s Day weekend? His bonds with the Palins were so tight, he said on TV, that Sarah and her husband, Todd, allowed Levi to live in their house with Bristol while they dated. Conservative family values?
Levi can be found on the cover of Playgirl magazine, his nude body blocked from full exposure by his strategically placed arm.
And to think, as we prepare to celebrate this day of men and family, Limbaugh, Gingrich and Palin have the unmitigated gall to look down their noses at our president.
Amazingly, King is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize.
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