Argument and the Ad Hominem Fallacy
Robb Lightfoot
There's at least 125 logical fallacies that we know of, and I'm not gonna go through all of them right now, but there's some that come up time and again. Probably the three most damaging are the ad personum—to the person when you attack a person. The fallacy of post ho, because one things happens first, the second thing must have been caused by the first…and hasty generalization, which is taking one or two examples and coming to these sweeping conclusions based on that. And anymore, I kind of refer to the fallacy of attacking a person as the Rush Limbaugh fallacy in my class. And you know, I don't know…which is an example of and kind of a reflexive thing—it's an example of what is. I'm kind of poking fun at Rush.

Rush Limbaugh
I do not regard myself as a name—caller. What I do is construct labels for people that I think aptly describe their views. I've used the term "feminazi" it's been the most distorted term I've ever come up…there are about twelve feminazis. And a feminazi is simply a woman, a feminist, to whom the most important thing in the world is an abortion. Every abortion possible must happen. There aren't very many of them, but those women do exist and feminazi, I think, is an adequate description of what they are attempting to accomplish and what they're attempting to do.

Al Franken
Well, the thesis seems to be stated in the title, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. However, in discussing it, he's really a big fat hypocrite and liar. But I thought that would be too confrontational to call it 'Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Lying Hypocrite.' So I just say big fat idiot. And I pretty much prove the lying hypocrite part, and he's not an idiot, but he says a lot of idiotic things.

Limbaugh
My other labels or name calling that I'm accused of engaging in, is not about people's personal characteristics. Now you can call me 'fat' all you want. If you do it now, you're going to be, one, wrong, and number two, calling me fat will not clue anybody in as to anything meaningful about me. All the labels that I've come up with attempt to hit the nail on the head as descriptions of people's views.

Lightfoot
Fallacies. There is an element to them where you can be outraged, or you can't just think they're great sport. And if the people, whether it's Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken, are doing it and you know, kind of winking at you. And we all know this is not really being taken seriously. That's one thing. But if it's creeping in and it's a part of getting us the listener or the reader to ignore the fact that often they're not really attacking what's being said, they're just harassing the person. Then it's a problem, and the thing of it is it's probably the most damaging fallacy of all is the fallacy of ad hominem, of attacking another person as a person rather than the ideas.