Ad Hominem

When you’re … born in a place where you don’t know the history, and no one tells you the history, and the
history, in fact, doesn’t exist, or in fact exists only in documents—when you are born like that, you have to learn
about where you came from. It takes a lot of time. … If you are French or English…, you are born to a great
knowledge of your origins and your culture. When you are born like me, in an agricultural colony far away, you
have to learn everything. – V.S. Naipaul from an interview, Paris Review, 1994.

Cultural note: We see that the warbler Mariah Carey, who has already tied Elvis Presley as the second-place
holder of the most No. 1 records, will soon, if her new hit ditty goes to the top of the charts, tie the Beatles as
the first-place holder of the most No. 1 records ever.
Man.
That’s — that’s just wrong.
On so many levels.

THE Israeli government recently raised an interesting question for advertisers: whom can you safely insult?
“American Jews” is the wrong answer. An ad campaign urging Jews to return to Israel showed a boy calling his
father “daddy” instead of “abba”. Diaspora Jews were outraged at the implication that they are not properly
Jewish.

Companies don't usually make such elementary errors. The list of people or groups an advertiser can be rude
about is very short, reckons Bob Jeffrey, the boss of JWT, a big ad agency. He recalls adverts from the 1960s
such as “You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's”, which depicted people of various ethnicities munching on
a Brooklyn baker's rye bread sandwich. Such slogans would not be kosher today. But “if you say you're not
going to annoy anyone, you might as well give up,” adds Mr Jeffrey.

Appel to Emotion

Children are more often than not toddled out as an appeal to emotion. From pictures of starving children to
motivate people to give to charity to using them as any excuse to ban things that children shouldn't even be
aware of (e.g., guns), they are repeatedly paraded in front of audiences to appeal to their emotional protective
instincts, often overriding anyone's sense of rationality . "For the children" or "think of the children" as
emotional appeals have been used with success in passing political motions such as Proposition Hate in
California.

As with children, cute animals override most people's logic. Even if the pictures of animal testing put out by
PETA are 50 years out of date, they still provoke an emotional response rather than a reasoned one when
trying to assess cruelty in animal testing.

Stawman

IN our highly-racialised society, some people think that the only way they can win elections or maintain political
power is by spewing out racial and religious hatred against minority groups. One of the main targets of this
dirty politics is the DAP, the secular Chinese-majority, social democratic party.

The concerted smear campaign ranging from Cabinet ministers to racist groups maintains he same premise:
that the DAP, by being Chinese, is a grave threat to the Malay Muslim majority.

1. Senator Smith says that the nation should not add to the defense budget. Senator Jones says that he
cannot believe that Senator Smith wants to leave the nation defenseless.

2. Caroline says that she thinks her friends should not be so rude to the new girl. Jenna says that she cannot
believe that Caroline is choosing to be better friends with the new girl than the girls who have always known
her.
3. Pamela is the class secretary. She says that she thinks that the class should do more service projects. Mark
says he can't believe that Pamela doesn't support the annual school dance.

4. Biology teacher begins teaching evolution by stating that all things evolve. Student says she just can't
accept that humans came from bugs.

5. Student tells his professor that he thinks some of Donald Trump's positions have merit. Professor says he
can't believe that the student believes in support racism.

6. Student tells his professor that he thinks some of Hillary Clinton's positions have merit. Professor says he
can't believe that the student supports giving access to classified documents to foreign countries.