Guilt by Association

With less than four days to go until the election, the fight over private school vouchers rages on. I got a flyer in the mail today that I found particularly interesting. On one side, it reads as follows:

"You can tell a lot about school vouchers by looking at the people who support them.
And the people who don't."

The reverse side reads like this:

"Those Supporting School Vouchers:
American Family Association
Heritage Foundation
Jon Huntsman, Jr.
Orrin Hatch
Howard Center for the Family
Focus On the Family
Family Research Council
Family Research Institute
Traditional Values Coalition
American Conservative Union
George W. Bush
George Will
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
Michael Reagan
Sean Hannity
Bob Dole
William F. Buckley
Walter Williams
Christian Coalition
Rob Bishop
Rudy Giuliani
National Right to Life
John McCain
Chris Cannon

Those Opposing School Vouchers:
ACLU
Planned Parenthood
National Organization for Women
Utah Democratic Party
Council for Secular Humanism
NAACP
Hillary Clinton
Michael Moore
Ralph Nader
Secular Coalition for America
Atheist Alliance International
Committee American Atheists, Inc. [sic]
National Humanist Association
Nancy Pelosi
Jesse Jackson
Ted Kennedy
Al Gore
Al Franken
Howard Dean
John Kerry
Atheists United
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
National Democratic Party
Barbara Boxer
George Soros

Seriously, now. Who represents your values?
Vote FOR Referendum 1 on November 6th!"

Whew, that's a lot of names to consider. Looking at the organizations—Many of which I've never heard of, by the way—it appears that if you think families are a good idea, you have to vote for vouchers. If not, people might think you're a secular humanist, or even an atheist! And we can't have that!

And then there are the people. Looking at the "Oppose" list, we see all the bogey-men (and bogey-women) that sensible, conservative, values-oriented Utahns are supposed to fear and hate. Hillary, Gore, Moore, Jesse, Pelosi—names to conjure with, names with which to inspire fear and loathing. Surely nobody in Utah would want to support something these people support!

Which is all fine, except for one thing: None of this has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with the real issue.

You may remember a few months ago when I referenced the Excellent List of Logical Fallacies. Well, here's that site's definition of the Guilt By Association fallacy:

You know who else preferred those other logical fallacies?
*(insert pictures of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot here)*

Seriously, now. What does any of this have to do with vouchers?

--

To be completely honest, I'm pretty much sick of the whole voucher thing by now. It's all I've heard about on the radio for the last couple of weeks. At this point, I almost don't care which side wins, as long as it's over. I'm tired of hearing about it.

On the other hand, working for a public opinion polling firm, it's been wonderful for business. We've had all the work we could ever want over the last three weeks or so, and mostly it's because of the voucher question on next week's ballot. Mixed blessing, I guess.

--

A week or so ago, I got yet another mailer on the voucher issue, again from the pro-voucher folks. In this mailer, they cited a story on KSL TV: Truth Test: School Voucher Ads Deciphered. This mailer shows various scenes from the report, along with large green "True" stamps or big red "False" stamps across them. The mailer tells voters that the report from KSL, one of the area's biggest news outlets, demonstrates that the East coast union-based anti-voucher ads are false, and that Utah voters should join their governor and vote Yes on vouchers.

As it turns out, this mailer drew the ire of KSL. First, the people publishing the mailer hadn't bothered to get permission to use the station's logos, images from the broadcast, or the picture of the reporter who did the story. Furthermore, the station contended that the mailer had taken pieces of the story out of context to support their position. The station's news director said, "It's ironic that we do a ‘truth test,' the intent being to distinguish between spin and actual fact, and the people who like what we did in that story take our material and spin it out of context". Shortly thereafter, KSL posted the following statement about the report on their website:

On October 17, 2007, KSL 5 Eyewitness News aired a report evaluating the truth of certain claims made in recent political advertisements. One portion of this report evaluated ads being aired by both proponents and opponents of Referendum 1. In the story, KSL took no position for or against Referendum 1, and no position either for or against Referendum 1 was intended to be implied by the story.

Recently, an organization that supports Referendum 1 sent out a direct mail flyer quoting portions of KSL's news story as support for that organization's views about Referendum 1. KSL believes that the flyer implies that KSL itself produced, or was at least involved in producing, the flyer. This is not the case.

Indeed, the KSL Editorial Board has aired an editorial stating that it is opposed to Referendum 1. KSL strongly encourages all citizens to carefully and independently research this and other political issues before casting their votes at the polls.

Fair enough. And after my own research, I've determined that I'll be voting against vouchers next week. I was already uneasy with the concept of using tax money for private schools. The tactics pushed me over the edge.

Line me up with the atheists on this one.