Oxyconfabulation

In the midst of another dissection of Michelle Malkin’s book, In Defense of the Indefensible, David Neiwert coins a useful term for the most common form of conservative argument:

Malkin, in fact, manipulates history in a way that makes clear that her entire methodology is little more than a polemical parlor game: Play up whatever scraps of evidence you can find to support your point, pretend that the wealth of evidence disproving your thesis simply doesn’t exist, and then fend off your critics with a steady string of non-sequiturs and irrelevancies, never answering their core criticisms. This tactic is familiar to anyone who’s dealt with the right much, especially in the past decade. Just call it Oxyconfabulation.

 

The same technique is particularly prominent when attempting to defend Bush’s policies in Iraq. Link to some random anecdotes about traffic lights being better synchronized, throw in a few quotes from a circle-jerk of similarly unreliable pundits, and ignore the overwhelming countervailing evidence. (The blog version of this could be called “Instafabulation.”)