Saturday, August 21, 2004

An example of the fallacy of "On-the-other-hand" - as someone called the tendency of the press to treat two sides of any question as having equal validity, no matter how absurd one side may actually be.

From the Washington Post:

"O'Neill has said that the initials "KJW" on the bottom of the report "identified" it as having been written by Kerry. It is unclear why this should be so, as Kerry's initials are JFK. A review of other Swift boat after-action reports at the Naval Historical Center here reveals several that include the initials "KJW" but describe incidents at which Kerry was not present."


Notice that despite this, the Post is actually treating O'Neill's statement that "KJW" identifies Kerry as though it was a legitimate possibility simply because he said it, when it is obviously total hogwash to any sane person.

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