Exxon-Mobil loses

If you spend any time around high school debaters or their coaches, or in lots of online debates you are familiar with this rule: "Whoever mentions Hitler first loses." Maybe it seems arbitrary, but I think not. If your position is so weak, so lacking in merit, that the only possible advantage you can gain is to accuse your opponent of being a Nazi, or of arguing for a proposition that will lead inevitably to turning power over to people like Hitler, then you've admitted that you are out of ideas.

That's what happened this afternoon on Fox "News". H. Sterling Burnett, an Exxon-Mobil apologist at the National Center for Policy Analysis, was on talking about Al Gore's global warming movie. Devoid of any argument against the content of the movie, here's what he said about Gore:

That’s the problem. If I thought Al Gore’s movie was as you like to say, fair and balanced, I’d say, everyone should go see it. But why go see propaganda? You don’t go see Joseph Goebbels’ films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don’t go see Al Gore’s films to see the truth about global warming.

You can see the video at Think Progress, but it really is as bad as it looks: Gore is a Nazi, and is no more to be believed than Goebbels.

As they say, the first one to mention Hitler (and I think it applies equally to Goebbels) loses.

For more on Exxon-Mobil, take a look here.