Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Korval: Removed this one. The explanation clearly shows that it's not an example of this.

In one episode of Star Trek DS 9, Jadzia and Worf go to Risa. There some guy wants roots for the Federation to toughen up, as enemies are abound. He is depicted as an idiot rabble rouser and possibly a terrorist. But he happens to be right. The situation IS dire shortly after that point and more people in UFP willing to fight would be an advantage. Made more nteresting in that when Sisko espouses similar beliefs in the face of Starfleet's reluctance to prepare for a Dominion invasion, he's treated as the voice of reason.
- Although the Essentialists weren't arguing for rational strategic buildup or military preparation. Their argument was that spending any time on vacation made the Federation incapable of defending itself. Presumably they'd have been more content if everyone had spent all their time in devotion to the state and military preparation—more like the Cardassians. It's not like Trek is Warhammer 40,000, and the presence of a pleasure planet for temporary leisure doesn't undermine the existence of the Federation. Guy was a nutter.
  - And Even that, The Imperium of Man has many pleasure planets (they're called Graden Worlds), and are used by their solders to train and relax, really.

Rebochan: I pulled this one for This Troper-ing and also because I couldn't figure out how to strip it of being a personal anecdote and leaving a legitimate trope example behind.

This Troper has found that most of the positive critical reviews of the third Harry Potter movie make an excellent case against it. Let me see if I can summarize a typical review: "It's Darker and Edgier! And there's Angst! Alfonso Cuaron is a genius! That idiot Chris Columbus didn't understand that True Art Is Angsty!" And I actually like the third movie.
- Very much a case of Your Mileage May Vary: Many Potter fans consider Azkaban the best from a movie-making standpoint, but the worst book adaptation of the bunch.

If someone has a way to do it without inserting their own This Troper opinion, it'd be appreciated.

Caswin: The Star Trek Voyager example conveniently skims over the fact that Q offers to send Janeway and Voyager back to Earth as a bribe. For that matter, it doesn't even make any sense without that fact. Is there even a strawman here?

Caswin: Removing it. I don't see a strawman, just distortion of the facts.

Freezer: Yeah, that was basically Janeway bashing. Whether or not she deserved it in this case ~~(she did)~~ is beside the point.

Rebochan: There's actually a massive Edit War going on over the goddamn Coneheads movie for some reason. Here's the entry. I pretty much only pulled it for now because the only way to get the Edit War people to notice would be to pull it again.

Gorman Seedling, the INS director from The Coneheads. While some of his ideas are extreme and definitely on the wacky side, most of his views on immigration really aren't unreasonable. In fact, often enough he's remarkably nicer than he really has to be with people that are breaking the law.
"America can no longer be responsible for the employment problems of the rest of the world. We sympathize with your situation, but we have problems of our own."
- Note that he's saying this to a group of Cubans trying to reach the US on a crowded boat.
  Eli Turnbull: "But sir... Creatures from another planet... Isn't that the Air Force's responsibility?"
  Gorman Seedling: "If they are just visiting, absolutely. But when they stay and work, they belong to the INS."
- On the other hand, his "electrical fence across the Mexican border" idea while funny and outlandish then, starts ringing a bit close to home now, probably taking him right back to regular Strawman territory.
- This is probably deliberate, in that by the end, it turns out he has no problem with the Coneheads...he just has a problem with them being here illegally.

So there's a lot of people that want this pulled and a lot of people that want it on the page. Discuss it here and come to a consensus. From my perspective, it's got too much natter, but it can still be a legitimate entry after cleanup. I don't see a reason to delete it entirely.

Black Humor: Thing is, assuming the second line is right the whole thing seems to be making him sound too nice. Certainly too nice for Strawman Has a Point.

Rebochan: A strawman should be someone the viewer is expected to despise and they're constructed as an easy target of loathing. This trope is when a character constructed like this comes off as more sympathetic than the point they are opposing. Having not wanted to see the film and succeeded in that goal, I can't say if the guy is presented as such.

Anthony Alexander: It seems to me that Seedling's extremeism isn't necessarily from hating illegal immigrants so much as being very, very dutiful in his job, to the exclusion of ethical concerns. Which makes him a whole other type of strawman, now that i think of it, but I doubt the writers were considering that.

Robin Zimm: Isn't this a Subjective Trope?

Freezer: @thatother1dude (Re: The Robert Kelly/X-Men entry): "Horrible false analogy?" "Mutants = Minorities" is the core theme of the X-Men comics. And, no, the movies aren't different.

Jerrik: Though it is true that mutants are suppose to represent minorities, deciding someone is potentially dangerous because of their ethnicity or religion is different than deciding someone is potentially dangerous because they can make peoples heads explode just by thinking about it. Comparing mutant registration to gun control does make a lot of sense.

Jerrik: Moved this here.

Of course this depends on your perspective of the effectiveness and ethics of gun control. For instance as a member of the NRA might point out, gun control does nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals, and criminalizes the law abiding.... and registration merely puts you on a list to be exploited when a less morally upright administration comes along.

This stretches the metaphor of gun control to the point where it no longer fits. It is a valid point, but it needs to be edited, I think.

Robin Zimm: The Strawman Strikes Back still hosts the Laconic and the Quotes pages.

Freezer: Fixed.

Yongary: Didn't this page have a Live Action TV section? Because it's empty now.

Freezer: Deleted this one (for the second time)

Advertising

A lot of people are turned away by the "Get A Mac" ads because the PC is sympathetic, funny, and trying to improve while the Mac is smugly perfect and always bragging about his superiority. It proves the message that Mac users are snobs compared to normal Windows users who are constantly pestered to switch, regardless of how funny the ads are.

Yes "I'm A Mac, I'm A PC" is chock full 'o strawman goodness. This is not a trope that says "This media has a strawman". This is a trope that says "This media has a strawman, and he's making more sense than the people were supposed to agree with." If PC were to point out the fallacies 9and occasional outright lies) of the Mac-centric characters, this would be this trope. Instead he's supposed to be a bit of a buffoon, hopelessly outmatched by the younger, cooler Mac. But since Mac is such (to put it bluntly) a smug dick, PC comes across as a sympathetic figure. That's not this trope either: that's The Woobie.

Luc: Maybe we should have Marvel Civil War Strawman Problems, just to make the Wall Banger aspect clearer.

Removed this:

In the 2008 remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, Kathy Bates's character was clearly meant to be a General Ripper-type, whose "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude was clearly The Wrong Way (in other words, "violence bad, talking good"). Problem was, Klaatu's own words and actions proved she was absolutely right about him. (He was sent to destroy the population and he wasn't very reasonable when they did try to talk to them.)
- Particularly jarring considering in the original movie he was a relatively reasonable guy and the writers of the remake drastically altered the character simply to try to make him Bad Ass to the point where violence against him, which was originally a stupid idea, became the logical choice.
  - Well..., personally, This Troper thought the humans were such Jerk Asses and so unsympathetic that by the time they finally tried to reason with him, (which they should have done 30 minutes ago), I was like "Fuck the humans". this trope certainly still applies though. Oh! And the most interesting character in the whole movie barely ever moves!
  - Though the strawman does have a point, they were in the wrong at first. Klaatu, while not nearly as reasonable as he once was, was still going to give the humans a chance. Had he been allowed to speak at the UN ("shape up or we Grey Goo your sorry asses"), they could have avoided a lot of the trouble. One bullet, imprisoning, and possible torture later, he basically says, "fuck this, y'all ain't listening, so now you die." In other words, Strawman Has A Point, but only after their own mistakes.

As the response says, Klaatu was going to give humanity one last chance, but the Strawman's shoot/torture first strategy actually makes him give up on that for a while. Going against his requests and trying to assume control of the situation proved to be the exact wrong thing to do, and got a bunch of people needlessly killed.

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Psyclone - removed:

Dan Brown's argument for why god allows suffering in Angels and Demons is shot down as soon as you realise telling somebody to be careful is not analogous going out of your way to kill that person.

This isn't Strawman Has a Point. If it were, the villain would be giving this statement, the book would have considered this to be "wrong" and it would be a valid argument. Only the first of these things apply. In regards as to why it isn't a valid argument, exactly how is God "going out of His way" to kill people? The point of the argument is that God allows free will to let Humanity learn from its mistakes. Granted, I don't exactly agree with this reasoning (I'm an atheist), but between that and God outright killing people is a big leap.

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The Masked Redactor - Question Re: Cryptonomicon (example not removed because I don't have the book here to reference). I would have to hunt that section down again, but I seem to recall that the main character was not so much arguing that the professor's point about skillsets was wrong as that he was not presenting it in a logical way—the professor uses a lot of stereotypical liberal-arts metaphor and analogy about "exits off the Information Superhighway" that confuse the more technically-minded main character and seem, to him, to leave him no room to discuss or refute the point; and his admirers, meanwhile, agree with him as though he has said something profound, when to the main character's viewpoint all he's done is string words together in a vaguely negative way. It's less StrawmanHasAPoint and more Strawman Doesn't Speak Clearly, with a healthy dose of the professor denouncing the Internet as the problem rather than the educational system that leads to the main character possessing his advantage in the first place.

Myrmidon- Maybe, but the main character also refuses to admit the point about the educational system. It was mainly string of badly worded cliches and buzzwords but he still kind of had a point.

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Freezer - Clipped this:

Has anybody else noticed that Barty Crouch Sr. was dead right about his son being guilty as hell and had good reason for the way he treated his House-Elf?

A link to the series in question would be nice.
What, exactly, are you talking about? When did anyone doubt Crouch Jr's guilt? And the point was to highlight the kangaroo court Crouch Sr oversaw in WRT the Death Eaters (the ones who couldnt' talk or bribe their way out) after the first war. The house elf thing... I have no idea what you're getting at there.

Archived Discussion Main / StrawmanHasAPoint