Political Blogs

Of the many political blogs, I picked the blog [andrewsullivan.com] to study. I chose this blog because of the clean, easy to navigate design of the website, and after browsing this site, it seems to be an eclectic mix of both serious responses to the daily news and funny little tidbits and videos. For instance, he has posted videos from youtube making fun of famous newsworthy figures, such as Bin Laden and Hitler, and also several poems about what happens when one drinks too many martinis. He has had an extensive journalistic career, as listed in his biography, and has published several best selling books. He has worked for the top news agencies in America and has also spoken at many prestigious American Universities.

Sullivan has a disclaimer at the top of his blog, claiming to be nonpartisan and belonging to “no party or clique”, and as one reads his blog, he does seem to try and uncover the truth along no party lines, but there is also an air of conservatism about his blog as well.

Sullivan critiques his blog, but in a way that is not overtly obvious to the reader. Many times, he will post a funny cartoon or an email from one of his readers, and his audience is supposed to catch onto the gist of the argument without him saying a word. Other times, he links to an article and explains his position, while, at the same time, revealing the holes in the story/argument.

For example, in his post titled Neoconservatism and Violence, he quotes a scholarly article by Ian Buruma, who uses an allegory to compare how conservatives’ love of power is rooted to a dogmatic way of thinking. He illustrates how their faulty line of reasoning states that, as opposed to the weak liberals, the only true way to deal with terrorists is to allow torture to occur, and the article says something about the love of power, and wanting to appear strong, and the only way to appear strong is to allow prisoners to be tortured. This very misguided way of thinking was pointed out by Sullivan, who sees the fallacy in the argument and disagrees strongly with the sentiment.

Another fallacy uncovered by Sullivan is in his post titled, Time to Ridicule. In the post, he quotes a reader, who realized that the message the Bush administration was sending to the public was one of “…fear instead of confidence”, whose message, “should frighten American into giving up our civil liberties.” This is a blatant use of scare tactics, and the reader can tell that Sullivan agrees completely with the speaker, because he doesn’t write any amendments to this e-mail.

The last I will discuss is the fallacy Sullivan noticed in the media is present in the post Surging For Partition? In this post, he points out that the use of Equivocation, or half truths, was used by not only the Bush Administration, but also by Charles Krauthammer, who Sullivan quotes in this post. Krauthammer argues that the troop increase will finally be able to stabilize Iraq into 3 distinct areas, and also points out that even though that is not the ideal solution, stability can finally be achieved in Iraq because of the troop surge. Sullivan points out that Krauthammer brings up some very good points, but fails to properly predict the outcome of a troop surge, and uses equivocation to cover up the lack. Scattered all throughout Sullivan’s blog are comments revealing what the people in power don’t want uncovered, and it is because of blogs like his that this nation can reveal the fallacies in their arguments.