| Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington | 
 enlarge | Authors: Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein
Publisher: Abrams Image
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 196
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0810995417
Dewey Decimal Number: 401.41
EAN: 9780810995413
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
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 `Understanding Political Doublespeak Through Philosophy and Jokes' October 18, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The examples may be quoted from and especially relevant to Washington but the process of political doublespeak is universal. I mention that to try to reassure the Americans who may feel that their politicians (of whatever stripe) have been singled out unfairly. My own copy of this book is liberally festooned with Post-it notes, many of which cause me current amusement and may well form part of my future research for post-employment writing.
`It's a good speech - just a couple of points need obfuscation.'
The book (hardbound, as all good reference material should be) has six parts. Those parts are entitled:
Part I The Tricky Talk Strategy (Misleading with Doublespeak)
Part II The `So's Your Mother' Strategy (Misleading by Getting Personal)
Part III The Fancy Footwork Strategy (Misleading with Informal Fallacies)
Part IV The Star Trek Strategy (Misleading by Creating an Alternate Universe)
Part V Extra Credit (Misleading with Way Twisty Formal Fallacies)
Part VI The Debates (Misleading by Fabrication (Ours))
All of this is very important if you wish to understand what is fallacious and why. But if you are just in the mood for humour, and need to be comforted in these unsettling times consider: that failure may simply be a success that hasn't happened yet! This reminds me of another line (not in the book), which I will borrow from another famous philosopher (the late Jim Morrison) and quote accurately albeit out of context `No-one here gets out alive'. Is this a lie, or a larger truth?
Yes, it is true: `There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you' (Will Rogers)
Now I have a dilemma: where do I store this book? Under `H' for humour, or under `R' for reality? Alas, `F' for fallacy (examples) is already overflowing.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
 Poor Follow Up Effort September 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
After a throughly enjoyable "Plato and a Platypus", I was expecting more of the same crisp, original offerings. Unfortunately, this one is tilted so far to left that it becomes exactly what it is trying to elaborate on...Political Doublespeak. For example, under the lists of "...unspeakably sneaky Unspeak" their favorite is "preventing voter fraud" for "disenfranchising poor and minority potential voters." So, if you have have a problem with dead people voting,and any of the other documented examples of outright voter fraud; then your real goal is to "disenfranchise" the poor and minorities?? The first sentence in the Introduction is "That sounds like utter bulls**t!" So does a lot of what follows!
Overdue assesment of political doublespeak September 4, 2008
From Jerome Stephens, retired reference librarian, Warren, Ohio
It is interesting to note the trends of thought in the reviews. So they concentrate on the Bush administration. That administration is the one that has been in the news for the last 8 years. If the book had been published in 2000, the Clinton administration would have supplied an equal amount of equally good material for the book.
Fallacies are fallacies, and can be hard to understand and trace. The authors have done quite well with an inherently slippery subject.
 Nice idea, but... August 21, 2008
I watched the authors on C-SPAN during their book tour and was intrigued.
I just bought the book, and I am... disappointed.
Oh, the jokes are amusing enough, and the explanation of logical fallacies is dead simple to understand, and the examples given are spot on- let's make no dispute on that. A quick reading of this book will educate the thoughtful mind on exactly how and where our leaders are trying to fool us.
The problem is that, well, it's a quick read. It's too quick. It is, to be frank, shallow- a quick dip on each topic, then rushing on to the next, without fully developing or explaining any one item, much less all of them. This is a book to which the word "profound" need not apply; there are no openings available.
The book also suffers from leaning too heavily on the Bush administration for examples. True, George W. Bush and his cronies have raised lying to the voters to new heights, but there needs to be political balance in an educational work such as this; otherwise a large portion of the readership will tune it out as being partisan. I say again, Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Rice, and the rest of the Bush White House employ logical fallacies and outright deception like Olympic champions- but that's no excuse for failing to give more than token gestures to demonstrating Democrats' equally offensive use of the tactics.
One final quibble: if you can use the eight letter word for bovine excreta without censorship, you can use its four letter root word without censorship. If you can't say the word without blanking out letters in the w--d, you shouldn't use the word at all. Please don't treat your readers like little kids, especially since little kids know quite well what "the F word" is- even if they might not know what it means.
A Negative Exemplar August 14, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I suppose I'm just piling on, but I also was quite disappointed with Aristotle and an Aardvark after enjoying Cathcart and Klein's previous book. I expected some bashing of conservatives and Republicans, but I (perhaps naively) expected balance. After all, politicians are politicians no matter which side of the spectrum they pretend to be from. While there were a few examples of silliness from the other side of the aisle, Cathcart and Klein spent the majority of the book bashing President Bush and other conservatives.
However, they did provide frequent examples of ad hominem attacks, such as the many derisive pseudo-titles given the President and the "hilarious" little reference to Tom Delay's background in the extermination business. What? Does providing a needed service and running a successful business prepare a person less well for public office than getting rich through the legal extortion that is our current tort system (e.g. a certain former senator from North Carolina, presidential candidate, and moral leading light)?
I have seen far better explanations of logical fallacies in textbooks for Freshman Composition and Introductory Public Speaking. I'm sure Cathcart and Klein will cry over my critique all the way to bank; nevertheless, I won't be buying any of their work again. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. If the authors had any integrity, they would market this book with a marketing line like "If you loved Fahrenheit 911, you'll love Aristotle and an Aardvark."
Too bad I can't get my money back.
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