The Sycophancy Fallacy

While I have, for health reasons, radically cut back on my reading of politcal blogs since the last presidential theatre season, a few times a week I do nonetheless check in on a few blogs, both left and right, to get a feel for what has caught people's attentions.

Just today I saw yet again an assertion I see regularly, namely, that the bloggers on The Other Side never say anything bad about their party of choice, that they're totally in thrall to them. On the face of it, this is positively delusional. If there is anything both left and right political bloggers as a class have in common, it is a passion for mercilessly savaging allied politicians. Not all of them of course, but there is hardly a lack of examples. The week following the "Nuclear Option" filibuster show-down probably offers 1000s of examples from both sides.

I have to wonder if people even think when they say something like that, or if it's some sort of phatic (WikiPedia def.) expression, like "well, that's the end of this post, I hope you enjoy it."