And so we blame the wife for the husband’s choice of career?
I see that “blame-the-victim” logic is still alive and well.
:roll:
Wasn’t there a special on the history and creation of the WTC on eithe The Learning Channel or Discovery Channel, that featured an interview with the head of security from his office high in the towers speaking his concerns about threats to them including a plane intentionally being flown into them?[/quote]
There was. The architect designed the Towers to survive a direct hit from the biggest aircraft that were then in service. However, planes got bigger. Good idea, but not enough execution.
And so we blame the wife for the husband’s choice of career?
I see that “blame-the-victim” logic is still alive and well.
:roll:[/quote]
So what would you do, Case? Pay money to every widow in America? How about the men who drown while crab fishing in Alaska? What about roofers who fall to their deaths? Truckers who die in collisions? Reporters killed in Bosnia? Why was their insurance good enough, but Pearl’s wasn’t? Why does she–and she alone–deserve special treatment?
I’m waiting for your answer.
Here’s a followup link, Case. 30 reporters died in Bosnia. 20 have died in Gulf War 2 to date. Tell me why Pearl’s widow deserves compensation beyond insurance and they don’t.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/24/1061663672801.html?from=storyrhs
I agree with Dave here.
Wow. Being a lapdog is kinda fun. You don’t have to actually build arguments… you can just post “me too” with some sort of joke attached, and call it good. I begin to understand Rush Limbaugh better.
Alright, I do have a minor quibble with my overlord:
As for Pearle’s widow, could she be any more grasping? Pathetic.
I think Pearle’s widow illustrates the folly of 9/11 payments. Given that precedent, her arguments perfect sense… except that when they’re taken in the overall context that Dave laid out, the entire victim pay-out thing is rather stupid. However… I don’t see how it’s a personal failing on the part of Ms. Pearle to go after the money. Why not try to take advantage of a messed up system? If in doing so you end up illustrating exactly how it’s messed up… all to the better, right?
But other than that point… dittos, Dave. Megadittos.
I don’t want to say I think she is trying to get her hands on some money, but it was reported in the article (or a similar one) that her husband was earning over $100,000 per year. If she were trying to sustain the kind of living one would presume a family with that sort of income would have, yeah, I’d imagine she’d be in a financial struggle.[/quote]
Doesn’t matter if he was making 100k or 10k, the only sure thing in this situation is that life style is going to change for survivors. The standard of living is going to drop. That guy was, what, 40ish? He was just getting into his big earning years. Doesn’t really matter that he was already doing well, he was going to do much better over the next 20 years. That’s all gone now. Hopefully they had enough insurance to secure the house. The only big difference between losing a 100k earner or 10k earner at that point, is that the 100k guy most likely has more insurance.[/quote]
All true, but reporters die in conflict zones almost every year. When it happens, there’s generally a little blurb on the news about it, the main anchor expresses the news org’s condolences, and it’s never mentioned again. For Pearl’s widow to claim that her husband’s death is somehow more deserving of governmental compensation than that of every other reporter who’s died while covering a story is ridiculous.[/quote]
Your point being what? She never said anything of the kind.
Look, I only responded becasue I thought it was a bit much to assume that the direness of her situation had anything to do with life style choices she made after the tragedy. That has nothing to do with whether she is justified in staking a claim against the fund.
Now you’re using the “generalize from the specific” fallacy. We’re moving from talking about Daniel Pearl, who was as much a victim of Al-Queda as any 9-11 victim, not people who fall off roofs.
For the record, I do think it’s a good idea to expose the issue of the 9-11 payments. Why 9-11 victims, and no one else? I tend to agree with the other posters who think that the logic here is flawed.
As for Pearl – I dunno if he bought insurance or not. But I sure hope that bastion of democracy, the Wall Street Journal, did so. He was on their payroll.
I frankly don’t blame Pearl’s widow for doing all she can to help out her child.
Sorry Tim. I thought you were taking her side in making a claim. My bad.
[quote=“Case”]
Now you’re using the “generalize from the specific” fallacy. We’re moving from talking about Daniel Pearl, who was as much a victim of Al-Queda as any 9-11 victim, not people who fall off roofs.
For the record, I do think it’s a good idea to expose the issue of the 9-11 payments. Why 9-11 victims, and no one else? I tend to agree with the other posters who think that the logic here is flawed.
As for Pearl – I dunno if he bought insurance or not. But I sure hope that bastion of democracy, the Wall Street Journal, did so. He was on their payroll.
I frankly don’t blame Pearl’s widow for doing all she can to help out her child.[/quote]
Not a fallacy, Case. Let’s narrow the focus a bit. Do you think that the widows of reporters on the ground in Iraq right now should be able to lay claim to the 9/11 fund if they are killed by Al Quaeda operatives? Why or why not?
And so we blame the wife for the husband’s choice of career?
I see that “blame-the-victim” logic is still alive and well.
:roll:[/quote]
So what would you do, Case? Pay money to every widow in America? How about the men who drown while crab fishing in Alaska? What about roofers who fall to their deaths? Truckers who die in collisions? Reporters killed in Bosnia? Why was their insurance good enough, but Pearl’s wasn’t? Why does she–and she alone–deserve special treatment?
I’m waiting for your answer.[/quote]
This is what they call a straw man argument? The astute among us (sorry Mark) notice pretty quickly that Case never said anything of the kind. Meanwhile, you completely dodge the issue of what Case did say. To whit, you really are blaming the victim if you see it as a moral failing on her part merely for making a claim against the fund. I am hopeful that more thoughtful consideration will go into her claim than you’re able to produce here, Dave.
Not. According to Dick Clarke the Iraqi war is a huge waste of time in the war on terror!
Sorry, coudln’t resist.
Hey, thanks for the insult. Appreciate it.
And yes, I am blaming the “victim.” Why? Because her husband didn’t die on September 11, that’s why. Sure, Al Qaeda killed him. Al Qaeda also killed a bunch of sailors on the Cole and embassy employees in Kenya prior to the attack and dozens of Indonesian nightclub goers (and maybe Madrid train riders) afterward. They don’t get to make claims on the 9/11 fund. Why should she? Seriously. Why should she?
None of you have come close to trying to answer this question. You try to paint me as heartless while completely ignoring the main point.
Heh, goddamnit. Tools with which to intelligently critique arguments become tools’ arguments against intelligent critique. And here I was quietly expecting, what, the third recorded online admission of defeat. At least I saw a pack* of thirty-nine komodo dragons on my way to class today.
- Most animals having nifty words for a whole shitload of 'em: murder, pride, gaggle. Feel free to mentally substitute your favorite, or make up your own!!
Were Daniel Pearl’s murderers ever found to be al Qaeda?
I’ve heard multiple times that “four Islamic militants” were tried and convicted for the kidnapping, but never anything about them being members or associates of al Qaeda.
To Dave: what Tim said.
Hey, thanks for the insult. Appreciate it.
[/quote]
Dave, why do you feel I’ve insulted you? I have exposed what you’re doing with your poor arguments, but I don’t think that’s the same as an insult.
You have a perfectly good point from what I can tell; you’re just not making a very good case of it–mostly because you insist on calling people out on their responses.
[quote=“Case”]
To Dave: what Tim said.[/quote]
Unfortunately, I don’t think Tim’s arguments help the case much. Nobody is blaming the wife for her husband’s choice of career. They’re blaming her for making a claim against the 9/11 fund. It’s not like people are saying it’s her fault (or his fault) that he got killed, or anything like that. Dave is just saying that the mere fact that he was killed, or even that he was killed by terrorists, doesn’t mean she has a legitimate claim against the 9/11 fund. Because, as Dave pointed out, hundreds of people have been killed by terrorists and yet are not qualified to get payments from the fund. Because the 9/11 fund is set up to compensate victims of, as one would expect, 9/11. Pearle’s widow has no right to any of that money.
The only two justifications I’ve seen for her claim are:
-
Even if she has no right to the money, she’s doing the right thing because she has a kid, and the money would help the kid. Well, that’s a lousy argument in my book. My neighbor also has a kid who would be helped by money from the 9/11 fund. Should she make a claim? I mean, don’t you see that trying to take advantage of the 9/11 fund, when you clearly have no right to it, is a lousy thing to do, no matter how needy you are? It’s like trying to take money from a cancer charity because your husband got hit by a bus. The people who set up that money wanted it to go to very specific victims. She’s not one of them. Her trying to take the money is lousy.
-
By making a claim on the fund, she’s showing how unjust it is. You’ll forgive me if I think that’s self-serving bullshit. Actually, it’s not self-serving, because she’s never even said that; you guys just made it up on her behalf. But even if she had said it, what a load of BS. If you think the fund is unfair–heck, I’d agree with you–you point that out to people. You don’t make a grab at the money for yourself. I mean, are we assuming here that if they had given her money, she would have given it back with a snippy note?
And you still don’t answer the question. Nice job proving that you don’t actually have a point, Case.
Ryan, that’s a pretty good argument for not allowing all victims to make claims against the fund. I knew someone would eventually put it together.
You are also correct about my arguments not helping the case. Since I haven’t offered much of an opinon one way or the other on the case, my arugments cannot help.
I’m just criticizing Dave’s lame use of straw man to defend it; has anybody made any of the arguments he’s defending? I also think there is a lot of merit in the idea that you don’t blame a victim. I think the woman is being very pragmatic, and also rasing some important issues.
edit; Ah, just read the rest of your post. Mostly a good argument now that I’ve actually bothered to read it, but the analogy about the cancer fund just doesnt’ hold up. What if the cancer fund were just for lung cancer victims and the lady trying to take advantage of it lost her husband to lung and skin cancer? I don’t think it’s as clear cut as you’d make it. I suppose it comes down to how you evaluate the impact of terrorist attacks on the death in question. If you look at it that way, the only thing you could get a roomful of intelligent people to agree on here would be that the Mohammad Atta’s family shouldn’t get any money from the fund; all the rest is just a matter of getting the right lawyer to argue the case.
Wasn’t there a special on the history and creation of the WTC on eithe The Learning Channel or Discovery Channel, that featured an interview with the head of security from his office high in the towers speaking his concerns about threats to them including a plane intentionally being flown into them?[/quote]
There was. The architect designed the Towers to survive a direct hit from the biggest aircraft that were then in service. However, planes got bigger. Good idea, but not enough execution.[/quote]
Yeah, they were designed to withstand impact from a 707-sized airliner. The ones that hit the WTC were much larger, 767-class.
And, somehow, they didn’t realize just how much danger jet fuel was. All the debris that didn’t get blown out of the building by the impact got piled into one corner, and the jet fuel ignited it. The jet fuel itself burned out within minutes, but by that time, anything that could burn was on fire.
Strangely, the architects were correct. The towers withstood the impact of the planes. But it was the intense heat from the fires that weakened the surviving structural support and brought them down.