Talk:Straw man

Omit reference to Nixon's speech

The reference to Nixon's Fund speech as an example of a strawman argument should be omitted. The speech described the fund in question and Nixon's interactions with it. The reference to Checkers was obviously meant to be a mixture of humor and sentimentality; not a cogent argument. Ironically, the reference to the speech is more like a strawman argument, distracting from the substantive parts of the speech. 84.247.42.244 (talk) 18:14, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Nixon's "Checkers speech" is used as an iconic example of a straw man in almost every book on rhetoric:

• Rottenberg, Winchell, Elements of Argument: A Text and Reader, p.315
• Trenholm, Thinking through communication
• Waicukauski, Sandler, The Winning Argument, p.61
• Macagno, Walton, Interpreting Straw Man Argumentation, p.146
• Cohen, Live from the Campaign Trail, p.310
• Hirschberg, Essential Strategies of Argument, p.453
• Reid, Gossin, Stancer, The Prentice Hall Guide for Student Writers, p.306
• Leigh, The Approachable Argument, p.119

I think it's an excellent example and needs to stay. --Chetvorno^TALK 02:47, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

It fits when you use the most broad definition of a strawman, but in practice, it's a red herring. There was no attempt to defeat any argument, he simply distracted from it. It makes sense to call it a strawman in a very beginner setting, but if you want to be the most accurate, it's not. 173.188.34.253 (talk) 21:15, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

That's how straw men work. Both the dog and the $18,000 technically were "gifts from political supporters that Nixon took for his personal use". This is what people were criticizing him for. Rather than try to defend the $18,000, on TV he chose to defend a much smaller trivial gift. Since nobody had criticized the dog, it was a straw man. The argument he succeeded in defeating was that he was unethical in accepting gifts from supporters. His sentimental focus on the dog straw man made his critics look vindictive and nitpicking and he won the argument. The public elected him in spite of the fact that his argument didn't address the real issue, the $18,000. --Chetvorno^TALK 12:29, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

New version of Strawmanning

In the last year or two I have noticed lots of AI generated videos being published on social media that are implied to be genuine videos about the topic but only exist to be attacked as fake by representatives from the same community that created them. This is a interesting phenomena, is it a subset of strawman? Is it worth mentioning in the article? Flat Earth and Lunar landing deniers are classic examples of doing this. Mtpaley (talk) 17:39, 22 December 2025 (UTC)