Undermining Your Own Argument
Apparently Leftist blogger Meg Lanker faked a rape threat against herself in an attempt to Conservatives look bad. OK, this is sad and pathetic, even more so because it is almost guaranteed that her political allies will first forgive her, and then defend her actions as some sort of brave and necessary action to fight patriarchal... uh, whatever. It is also an incredibly dangerous action at a university, given that the Obama Administration has demanded that schools eliminate due process from on-campus sexual assault allegations and tilt their judicial process, such that it is, against accused male students. Had she done this at, say, Yale and actually framed a particular guy, that guy would probably be kicked out of school already.
I won't add any more critique of Ms. Lanker. Just assume that I am appalled by her actions. But let me raise an issue with the Conservative critique of Ms. Lanker: No one seems to be able to resist the temptation to comment on her looks and her weight, two things that (to my knowledge) are absolutely irrelevant to the discussion. They are just completely ad hominem. Stacy McCain engages in it, for example. The posts on this Facebook page (which perhaps is a hoax itself, given the ungrammatical and frankly absurd wording of the header phrase) are even more abusive in this same vein. Seriously folks, it is rather undermining to your argument that Lanker was exaggerating the boorishness of men with her fake threat when you jump on her Facebook page and engage in boorish ad hominem attacks.
Update: Holy moly did I get the wrong link for the Stacy MCain post. I will leave the link above as-is because it is kind of funny. I had this link on my clipboard because I wanted to suggest them to my teenage daughter as a way to deflect unwanted (by dad) male attention. The Stacy McCain link is here.
