Essay on "Ad Hominem Fallacy, the Arguer's Character"

Quoted Instructions for "Ad Hominem Fallacy, the Arguer's Character" Assignment:

You have to do exactly same formation as the sample below, and you have to find four fallacies minimum from any resources, so I want you to find 6 to 7. Here are the recommended fallacies that I want you to use: Straw man, Equivocation, Slippery Slope, Appeal to Tradition, Hasty Generalization, Ad hominem. But you can find other fallacies from the internet. You can*****'t use the example that is already identified the name of fallacy. If you read *****"What to do*****" below, you will know what i am talking about. If you don*****'t know what these fallacies are, you can easily find out from internet.

Here is the guide paper that my professor gave me.

Analysis of Fallacies Paper

Goal of the assignment: To demonstrate your understanding of common flaws in reasoning.

What to do: Use editorials, letters to the editor, blogs, or other opinion-***** writings from major news sources as your primary source material for this assignment. Read through these types of materials in order to try to locate examples of any of the fallacies discussed in class or in your class textbook.

Write a paper in which you provide examples of fallacies, clearly label the fallacies, and provide analysis showing why you think the example is guilty of the fallacy. Be sure to provide a complete bibliographic source citation for each example you include in your paper. Include a minimum of four examples in your paper. The paper should be two to three pages in length, typed, double-spaced.

Sample

 Example: The following letter appeared in response to an editorial by Jim Spencer and Curtis Ellis entitled *****Tea partying like it*****s 1968.***** In the original editorial, Spencer and Ellis wrote an analysis of the demographics of members of the tea party movement, noting that many of them came of age in the 1960s. In response to their article, ***** Arenson of Valencia wrote:

The snobs and liberals have been bashing the so-called tea partyers as a bunch of disorganized, illiterate trailer parkers who are too stupid to *****get it***** ***** and now suddenly tea partyers are portrayed as *****75% college educated,***** *****two-thirds [of whom] earn more than $50,000***** and *****Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury***** boomers? This is hilarious. - Arenson, B. (2010, March 2). Letters: No sugar in their tea. Los Angeles Times, p. A12.

 Fallacy: Ad hominem, in which the argument is based on name calling.

 Analysis: Arenson is deriding people who have opposed the tea party movement as *****snobs and liberals.***** It isn*****t necessary for her to use name-calling, and it undermines and pulls attention away from the more substantial part of her argument ***** that critics of the tea party are off-base when such critics themselves commit the ad hominem attack of calling tea party supporters names (*****illiterate trailer parkers*****), because the demographics of tea party supporters reveal that tea partyers are actually educated and middle-class. Arenson makes her point quite well with the substantive evidence in her letter, and it hurts her credibility and reduces her to the same level as the people she is criticizing when she uses name-calling against them.