[Ads-l] QOTY

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Sep 26 19:57:30 UTC 2018


There are lots, aren't there?

Bret Stephens in yesterday's N.Y. Times:

"[Ted Cruz is]  the type of man who would sell his family into slavery if
that’s what it took to get elected. And...he would use said slavery as a
sob story to get himself re-elected."

This is a more amusing variation of the classic ex. of "ad misericordiam,"
viz. a man convicted of murdering his parents pleads for mercy on the
ground that he is a poor orphan.

I don't know the origin of the earlier version, but I read it in a logic
textbook, maybe 45 years ago.

JL

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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