How to logic

I don’t have Richard Reed’s phone number (nor do I know that Richard Reed is the real name of that particular harasser), so in lieu of picking up the phone and giving him a jingle, I’ll do a post about his argument for the legitimacy of photoshopping pictures of people’s faces onto goats post.

Where I “harass” Barack Obama and Ophelia Benson

There is still a lot of talk in the skeptic community about “harassment”, and what constitutes it. Ophelia Benson claims that people photoshopping her constitutes harassment. In this post, I will show how ridiculous that idea is!

Here is a goat. Lets call him Clive:

goat

Now, lets say for sake of argument that I want to mock Barack Obama. I could do that by putting his head on Clive and putting a crude message on the picture:

goat-obama

Now, according to Ophelia Benson, photoshopping constitutes harassment, so does the above image harass Barack Obama? I don’t think so! :)  Let’s apply the same thing to a picture of Ophelia:

goat-benson

Now, who would consider either of the above pictures to be “harassing” of Barack Obama or Ophelia Benson? Only the hypersensitive or the histrionic I guess! :)

 

So his argument is: it’s ok to photoshop Obama’s face onto a goat, therefore it’s ok to photoshop my face onto a goat.

It’s my view that there are some steps missing between his premise and his conclusion. I also have grave doubts about his premise.