This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
I was just wondering if anybody else thinks that Archie Bunker from All In The Family counts as "the idiot of the week", except for the fact that he's portrayed like one pretty much every episode. Nay or yay?
Go, Idle Dandy!
Idle Dandy: Heh. I should give due props to the T Wo P SVU thread. We've been discussing this annoying device for some time.
Ununnilium: Took out...
A good example of the opposite would be pretty much every other take on the subject in popular media.
...for two reasons. First, the opposite of what, exactly? Do you mean that every other take on the subject is a reasoned piece on the dangers of global warning, or an angry pro-global-warming polemic, or what?
Second, because generalizations like this are almost completely useless as examples. They don't point out anything salient about the trope, and even if they did, they'd go better as part of the body of the trope, not as an example.
YYZ: By "opposite" I think he means to imply that Michael Crichton's the only author writing anything that challenges the conventional wisdom on global warming... in which case it's a massive overgeneralization, and you were right to remove it. (He also seems to imply that Michael Crichton's an idiot for going against the conventional wisdom, but let's not get into that discussion here.)
Fast Eddie: The trope holds up. The writers want to represent a position on an issue. They do so by bouncing ideas off of a foil who is presented as being stupid. A rhetorical foul called an ad hominem attack. In this case, by proxy.
Dark Sasami: Not ad hominem unless they actually call them names. This is a Straw Man Fallacy. As in Strawman Political.
Fast Eddie: Okay, I get it now. Dark Sasami is in a fisticuffs mood. We can do that. I call opposition to my position Abby Hominem. Abby is an idiot. I don't call him that. I show him as that. I can do that, because I have the pen.
Dark Sasami: You're reading me totally wrong, Eddie. I'm an editor; I correct things that are incorrect. This is my vocation, my job, and my filthy habit. There was no causal relation between my questions in that other page and the correction here—I would have chimed in here anyway.
Fast Eddie: Rats. I was looking forward to a good bout of fisticuffs. Just to assuage the editor ... the proper phrase would have been ad hominem per procurationem. If would you correct my capitals ... Well. Just don't.
Janitor: First Rule of Discussions About Idiots:
The first person to invoke Latin loses. This is the rule. There is no other pertinent rule.
Fast Eddie: Not fair! I had a sort of murky point, there.
Janitor: Too bad, bunky. You went Latin. Point forfeited.
Fast Eddie: Godwinist.
Janitor: See, that is ad hominem.
Fast Eddie: Ah-HAH! Gotcha!
Janitor: Walked right into that.
Fanra: I see a major problem with this in that most of the examples are plain Strawman Political, while this trope (it seems to me) is about picking one of the regular cast members and making them Strawman Political of the week. That means that it is something like you have a Five-Man Band and this week's episode or this novel of a series you take a dart board to pick which one is Strawman Political on one issue. Anyone seeing my point here?
Fanra: If no one objects, I'm going to take all the examples where it isn't the normal Five-Man Band type of "pick one of the gang to be Strawman Political on this issue" and move them over to Strawman Political page instead of Idiot of the Week.
CA Lieber: I have to question the All In The Family example on the page. I'm not sure how making Seventies liberal man Michael a sexist constitutes giving him the Idiot Ball. I'm not all that familiar with the show, but Michael (and Norman Lear, really) is a sort of person I would expect to be (mildly) sexist based on my knowledge of American cultural history — a liberal man of his background at that time would be expected to have sexist attitudes.
