Can’t make hay bashing straw men

‘I hate bumper stickers,” I said to a good friend a while back.

“You should make one that says that,” she replied.

Point taken. A sweeping statement condemning sweeping statements doesn’t hold up well to tests of logic.

On the other hand, it’s hard to escape all paradoxes in this crazy life. One maxim says to “fight fire with fire”; another recommendation attributed to many quotable persons says, “Don’t wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty, but the pig likes it.”

In politics in particular, what’s a conscientious citizen or candidate supposed to do?

One of the dirtier tricks we can pull is a straw man fallacy. We represent the idea we disagree with in bumper-sticker form, twisting and omitting facts, distorting context and exaggerating foibles.

It can be done deliberately or as a natural outgrowth of our predisposition to take the easy road.

Twice last month, I replied by e-mail to letter writers who I judged had substantially misrepresented what their opponents did or said. I recommended that they state the points of contention more clearly and honestly before contending with them.

I don’t often have time or wherewithal to do that. Usually I discard these and run letters that are less factually problematic; honestly, it’s easier than making editing suggestions to writers who are already agitated and may not welcome such criticism. And sometimes their whole argument stands on their own representation, so that to quote rather than mis-paraphrase the original point would eviscerate their counterpoint.

But this time I felt compelled to explain to the writers why we couldn’t run their letters as they were, perhaps because in both cases their unexplained rejection could easily have been chalked up to “media bias.”

I suspect that many who have accused our letters selection of bias would be surprised by my personal political convictions. Perhaps my own frustration at being misunderstood (a human frailty common even among newspaper employees) led me this time to stick up for the people to whom I felt these two writers hadn’t done justice.

My personal opinion on the issue wasn’t important; nobody wants to be lied about.

Still, I sent these two e-mails uneasily, because I knew what fury I might unleash by suggesting these letters should make the people they criticized look a little better. Believing that truth and right were on my side didn’t much assuage my emotional recoil from the angry and resentful reaction I anticipated.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. In both cases I got understanding and reasonable responses; one writer revised his letter for clarity’s sake and one withdrew his because a second consideration convinced him his attack was unfounded.

Maybe I got lucky this time, or maybe I discovered that most people really do want to have a worthy opponent and not a straw man.

Similarly to how I braced for the response to my e-mails, one July 31 writer tries to anticipate his philosophical adversaries’ response to Barack Obama’s reception in Germany: “Before The Spokesman-Review turns loose its stable of right-wing attack dogs (Cal Thomas, Michael Ramirez, Glenn McCoy, Thomas Sowell, etc.) to spin this phenomenon into their usual cauldron of conservative vitriol, let me offer these gentlemen a clue.”

This writer undeniably has a way with words. In fact, the phrase “usual cauldron of conservative vitriol” will go down as one of the most poetic descriptions on this page during my tenure here, using imagery, alliteration and a compelling rhythm. Unfortunately, such vivid language comprised a “cauldron of liberal vitriol” that is far from unusual.

The criticism was launched upon an admittedly imaginary (as yet) foe. The “gentlemen” named, however likely to behave as the letter anticipated, were roundly reproved one and all. And because the castigation was openly based upon conjecture rather than on hard facts (even twisted ones), there wasn’t much to be said in response. Until they made their own case on the issue, the “gentlemen” were only the images of straw men.

I doubt any of the Olympic athletes would relish beating such defenseless opponents. Even if it’s only a bumper-sticker-style motto, “Swifter, higher, stronger” only happens when you wrestle with the best.