Logical Fallacies Hasty Generalization: On

Logical Fallacies Hasty Generalization: On the FOX news channel's "Follow the Money" with Eric Bolling (June 22, 2011), talking heads were discussing the article on Al Gore in the latest Rolling Stone Magazine. Monica Crowley said Gore has to keep his "Inconvenient Truth gravy train" going.

Crowley said: "We've seen over the last year or so a lot of this data [on climate change] has been falsified, fraudulent, made up out of thin air." Really? What data has been proven to be false? She didn't say, she just drew a hasty conclusion, attacking Gore. Red Herring: Conservative author Ann Coulter was interviewed on the Web site RightwingNews.com about her new book, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America.

She was asked by host John Hawkins if Martin Luther King is given "more credit than he deserves compared to other civil rights leaders." Coulter diverted attention from King. "I equate Martin Luther King's civil disobedience with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue: Both were for good causes and the participants arguably had no choice but to break the law -- because liberals had taken away the rule of law…" Number 1 -- Ad Hominem.

First Lady Michelle Obama's official United States visit to Africa this week supports educational opportunities for youth, focuses on leadership training for teenagers' vis-a-vis HIV / AIDS education. She also meets with Nelson Mandela. In his letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune (June 21, 2011) John Clafford said: "I for one to not want a single dollar of my taxes to fund another trip for Mrs. Obama, her mother, her niece, her nephew, her daughters, her secretary, her baker, her hair stylist, her mechanic, her manicurist, her etc.

When does it stop?" Clafford's argument is simply an attack and fails to address any evidence as to the actual controversial purposes of the trip. By implication Clafford demeans Mrs. Obama. Number 2 -- Appeal to Authority. A letter to the editor in the Tulsa World (February 18, 2011) by Tom Lottinville asserts, "The crippling flaw in the defense of evolution is the absence of empirical evidence. The entire framework of evolution is patched together with suppositions, speculations and hypotheses," he says, without naming any of the three.

Then he uses an appeal to authority by quoting a chemistry professor at Columbia University, Dr. Harold Urey, who said, "All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere." That's a patently absurd, baseless evidence. Number 13 -- Slippery Slope.

Blair Magida Waddick writes to the Chicago Tribune that he is "horrified that the naive men on the Supreme Court have sided with Wal-Mart" (rather than with the class action suit against them by women claiming to have been discriminated against). "They should now be required to wear the same jump suits worn by race car drivers covered in corporate names, so we all know who owns them" (June 21, 2011). Number 5 -- Appeal to Tradition.

A mascara ad (LashBlast Volume Mascara) by Cover Girl asserts "You may never go false again" and pictures the dark, long, seemingly authentic lashes worn by model Nicole Fox. However, in fine print, the disclaimer admits "lash inserts" were used, according to Dana Oliver (www.stylelist.com). "Ericka" posts (May 31, 2011), "Why is this the first one being called out when they all do it, and have done it for years?" Number 10 -- Genetic Fallacy. FOX news talking head.