[Ads-l] straw-horse argument (was Re: "man" avoidance)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Most interesting. There seems to be more than one meaning. The context of
Acosta's remark sounded as though "strawman" was what he meant.

JL

On Mon, Jun 27, 2022 at 4:54 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > JIm Acosta, CNN:
> > "But isn't that a bit of a strawhorse argument?"
>
> “Straw horses” was employed by a judge in 1974 to refer to flawed
> arguments that the judge was able to refute. This usage did not
> correspond to the definition of “straw man argument”. But I think it
> provided a partial match. Follow the link to see the full article.
>
> Date: March 29, 1974
> Newspaper: The Spokesman-Review
> Newspaper Location: Spokane, Washington
> Article: Judge Cites Pros, Cons
> Quote Page 12, Column 1
> Database: Newspapers.com
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104535043/straw-horse-argument/
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Speaking to about 300 persons, he set up what he called "straw
> horses", or arguments advanced in favor of the death penalty.
> [End excerpt]
>
> In 1986 the phrase “straw-horse argument” appeared in a letter
> published in the San Francisco Chronicle. The phrase apparently meant
> “weak argument”.
>
> Date: December 24, 1986
> Newspaper: San Francisco Chronicle
> Newspaper Location: San Francisco, California
> Section: Letters To the Editor
> Letter title: South Africa Future
> Letter From: Robert Landon of Palo Alto
> Quote Page 26, Column 1
> Database: GenealogyBank
>
> [Begin excerpt - double check for OCR errors]
> Joanna Burroughs letter of December 19 in rebuttal to South African
> Doryn Pote's comment of December 16 is a classic example of the type
> of straw-horse argument which radio's legendary Baron Munchausen
> delighted to demolish with the query "vas you dere, Charley?"
> [End excerpt]
>
> Here are a few more instances.
>
> Date: June 2002
> Volume 9, Number 2
> Article: The Nine Lives of the Dynamic Unconscious
> Author: Jerome Kroll
> Journal: Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology
> Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
> Start Page 159
> https://muse.jhu.edu/article/44106/summary
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> With the compelling evidence from psychology and neuroscience that all
> memory is a reconstruction, I do not think that any contemporary
> psychodynamicist makes a case for fully formed repressed memories, nor
> is this notion essential to a theory of a dynamic unconscious. O'Brien
> and Jureidini invoke Occam's razor by invoking a straw horse argument.
> Their description of the action of subpersonal parts doing sufficient
> specific cuing sounds suspiciously like the work done in the dynamic
> unconscious.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Date: July 21, 2005
> From Stephen P. Harris
> Subject: compiling flpsed under Cygwin
> https://sourceware.org/pipermail/cygwin-xfree/2005-July.txt
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> SH: You people have been beating on a dead strawhorse argument by
> harping on whether I use Xfree or Xorg. That choice has not prevented
> other Linux originated programs (Xemacs) from compiling on my computer
> so it points to the libX11.dll.a answer.
> [End excerpt]
>
> In the citation below "straw-man" was deliberately changed to
> "straw-horse".
>
> Website: HuffPost
> Date: May 28, 2009 (Updated May 25, 2011)
> Article: Traditional Marriage and the Straw-Horse Argument
> Author: Jane Minogue, Contributor
> https://www.huffpost.com/entry/traditional-marriage-and_b_191423
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> "If we change traditional marriage, it's a slippery slope," said the
> man at the table next to me at the Cheesecake Factory. "Soon we'll
> have people marrying animals." Ah, the straw-man or what I dub the
> straw-horse argument. That is, if we change traditional marriage
> between one man and one woman, suddenly it's the end of civilization
> as we know it and bestiality rules.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
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>


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