Monday, August 06, 2012

Question-dodging may go undetected

A reader quotes:
Harvard Business School, Working Paper No. 09-048 ...

Question-dodging is a common tactic used by politicians and public relations officials. Here’s how it works: If you don’t like the question you were asked, answer the question you wish you had been asked. Politicians are notorious for using this strategy during public debates, ...

Question-dodging may go undetected when the answer is related to the question asked and is given with confidence and conviction.
I agree with this. Politicians regularly get asked questions of sort like: When will you stop beating your wife? Why do you hate poor people?

If the politician takes the loaded question literally, then he appears weak and incompetent. And rightfully so, because the question is not a serious question. It is just a slimy debate tactic.

I get comments on why I hate gays and Jews, and make personal attacks on them. I do not. Gays and Jews are only about 2% each of the USA population. I do not care what they do, as long as it does not bother me.

BTW, I allow comments that disagree with me, but there are some limits to my tolerance. I do sometimes delete rude personal attacks. I also use Google to filter out spam, and it has occasionally blocked comments that I would have permitted. I don't know whether Google blocked it because it was a duplicate, or the commenter resubmitted it when he saw that it did not show up online. At any rate, comments are occasionally held up for technical reasons.

I do object when gain official govt power, and then use that power to enforce their own personal prejudices to separate me from my kids, and to bust up other families. When that happens, I criticize what they do, and I criticize their personal prejudices underlying their actions.

Some readers ask whether I can be 100% of their motivations. I cannot be. But some things are obvious. When an expert witness testifies in court, and he is unable to cite any expert knowledge in support of his opinion, then how many possibilities are there? Maybe he is corrupt. Maybe he is applying his personal prejudices. Maybe the truth is some combination. No matter what, it is not good.

I have a reader who keeps making excuses for psychologist Ken Perlmutter. He suggests that maybe Perlmutter is not really a practicing Jew, but maybe applied his anti-Christian prejudices because a Jewish judge hired him to do that. Yes, I guess that is possible, but it is just as bad as anything that I have said.

Perlmutter was paid $28,000 to explain himself. He should have been able to say something besides his anti-Christian anti-father bigotry. If he or anyone else wants to post facts in his defense, go ahead. I would be glad to post his side. But he is an evil coward, and he will not admit to his motivations. So draw your own conclusions.

In an unrelated matter, I see the hot news story (besides the Martian landing and the Bolt sprint) is that the Milwaukee Sikh shooter was an Army "psychological operations specialist":
The gunman who opened fire in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., and killed six people has been identified as Army veteran Wade Michael Page.

Page, 40, opened fire outside the temple before entering around 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning and killed six people. He served in the Army from April 1992 through October 1998. ...

While in the Army Wade served as a sergeant, and later as a specialist based in Ft. Bliss in Texas and at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina. Wade's job was as a Hawk missile system repairman, and he then became a psychological operations specialist, defense official confirmed to ABC news.
The Army psychologists are probably the craziest people in the Army.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Psyops ( or MISO now) are not psychologist. They craft the commander's message to the public during operations. This is of course incredibly important during COIN fights but during the shooter's service it was in a diminished role.

If he was a Hawk missile repairman he probably was forced to reclass and Psyops picked him up for some reason.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, seems to me that Psyops is battlefield marketing and communications with a cooler name.

Anonymous said...

He suggests that maybe Perlmutter is not really a practicing Jew, but maybe applied his anti-Christian prejudices because a Jewish judge hired him to do that. Yes, I guess that is possible, but it is just as bad as anything that I have said.

What's new ? Just another lie. No reader said anything like this. Why don't you post the reader's comment ? It doesn't exist, except in your mind, maybe. Twisting and fabricating what people have said and written doesn't make it fact or real.

Anonymous said...

If the politician takes the loaded question literally, then he appears weak and incompetent. And rightfully so, because the question is not a serious question. It is just a slimy debate tactic.

I get comments on why I hate gays and Jews, and make personal attacks on them. I do not. Gays and Jews are only about 2% each of the USA population. I do not care what they do, as long as it does not bother me.

It's not loaded questions that you dodge, it's simple direct questions that you dodge. the commenter said he wasn't defending Perlmutter, he said the opposite, and just asked repetedly, how you KNEW that Perlmutter was Jewish and that the Judge was Jewish right ? You never answered. Will you ever ? Do you plan to keep dodging the question in favor of making speeches, and giving answers that avoid the question ?

I won't argue with you abut what constitutes slimy debate tactics.