Ad hominem argument always--always--tells you that the critics have nothing substantial to say against an opponent. Ad hominem is an attack upon the man (who is proffering an opinion or argument) rather than upon his opinion or argument. "The world is going to end tomorrow," says one. The critic soundly rejects the proffered notion of a terminal earth by criticizing not the opinion, but the unfashionable hair style of the advocate.
It's the kind of thing North Korea faces all the time when its bouffant-extraordinaire baby leader speechifies to his devotees. Nobody can give any credence to the opinions of one so sartorially challenged.
Ad hominem argument is cheap, nasty, and dumb. It is also irrelevant. It is only the small mind which considers it to be not only relevant, but an effective rebuttal. Nonetheless it sure makes one feel good, even superior, and riotously clever. But students of informal fallacies will tell you in a heart beat that ad hominem argument always fails because it has no relevance to the point at issue.
Yesterday, we posted an article Jamie Whyte authored. It appeared in the NZ Herald, and argued the current measures of child poverty in New Zealand were absurd, even meaningless. Within a heart beat his critics responded--with a nasty ad hominem attack.
Jamie Whyte had committed plagiarism. He had stolen the intellectual property and work of another, and passed it off as his own. Plagiarism is theft. Who would lend credence to arguments on child poverty measures when the protagonist was a thief?
But we read further, at great peril to our tender constitution. The resulting belly laughs were sufficiently incommodious to cause pain. One can infer that Whyte's opponents on this issue must be desperately short of decent, relevant argument, since they have played the ad hominem card, and one of a particularly desperate kind. You see, they charged Whyte of stealing from himself. Whyte had cribbed his article in the NZ Herald from a previously written article in the UK--which he had himself written.
Former Act Party leader Jamie Whyte has defended himself against accusations of "self-plagiarism" after it emerged an opinion piece he wrote on poverty in New Zealand was largely the same as one he penned in Britain a decade ago.
The piece, which claimed "there is no poverty in New Zealand", was published in the New Zealand Herald today. However, canny readers spotted many similarities between the piece and a work Dr Whyte published in the UK for the Times newspaper in April 2005. One reader complained that the piece was "about Britain, with the countries reworked ... This is the same article he had published about the UK." On Twitter, user @LI -- politico posted: "Jamie Whyte 2005 v 2016. He literally copied a previous thing he wrote about Britain." [NZ Herald]Now, of course the astute reader may be thinking that by cribbing off an article Whyte had previously himself written criticizing relative poverty measures in the UK as guaranteed always to categorize at least a third of the child population as poor, and arguing the same case with respect to NZ poverty measures mutatis mutandis, he was in fact demonstrating the folly of the same methodology in both countries--which actually strengthens his case. It represents an implicit claim to universal validity for his argument. In fact, Whyte, rather than resiling from his "theft" went on to admit this was the fourth time he had been "guilty". He had used the same arguments in at least four different articles.
But the point remains that Jamie Whyte had stolen from himself. He is a thief, and should repent by making restitution to himself.
Political commentator Giovanni Tiso accused the former politician of "self-plagiarism". "And by the way, in case you're confused, self-plagiarism really isn't okay. As an academic, Whyte would have had this hammered into him," Tiso wrote on Twitter."Political commentator" Giovanni Tiso ought to understand that his twittering is for the birds. He is talking nonsense. His ad hominem attack is not just irrelevant, it is silly. Imagine poor old Giovanni panting after a politician on the campaign trail "twittering" furiously as said politician egregiously committed self-plagiarism, delivering a speech in Eketahuna that was cribbed from one he delivered yesterday in Cromwell.
If that's the best rejoinder Whyte's critics can come up with, they have actually help make his case for misdirection on the matter of child poverty more credible. Thanks, Giovanni.
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