Special Pleading in Fox and Friends’ Lingerie Football Romp: A Critical Thinking Lesson.

I employ a segment from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart titled “Fox & Friends’ Lingerie Football Romp” (2009 season) in my critical thinking class to illustrate both the special pleading fallacy, and the underlying fundamental attribution error, which is a commonplace psychological obstacle to critical thinking.

You can find the video clip here: FOX & FRIENDS’ LINGERIE FOOTBALL ROMP

The clip begins with Jon Stewart covering the Fox & Friends show’s response to an event that took place at the MTV Movie Awards: actor Sacha Baron Cohen (of the Borat and Bruno fame) staged a prank where he ‘accidentally’ landed on Eminem in the audience, posterior first. The hosts at Fox and Friends—Steve Doocey, Brian Kilmeade, and Gretchen Carlson—expressed outrage over the clip, deeming it to be inappropriate to be shown on TV when children might be watching. Stewart allows the Fox and Friends hosts to rant over the content of the clip, almost letting Kilmeade go down a fallacious slippery slope. But in the next instance, Stewart goes to point out how the apparent outrage is completely forgotten when it is the hosts themselves who engage in it—merely a few days later. The scene changes to Fox & Friends’ coverage of the Lingerie Football League, where the hosts (Kilmeade especially) play touch football with scantily clad women. The scene is capped with Gretchen Carlson high-fiving all her co-hosts and the women of the Lingerie Football League, before exclaiming, “This is one of the best things I have ever seen on TV!”

This clip serves as a great illustration of the special pleading fallacy, and Stewart—with an incredulous stare—nails the discrepancy between the Fox & Friends’ response to the two events: “Sacha Baron Cohen’s ass on Eminem’s face at 9 p.m.—‘Disgusting!’  Brian Kilmeade’s ass on an underdressed woman’s face at 9 a.m.—‘The best thing I have ever seen on television!’”

The special pleading fallacy occurs when two standards are employed, (a lenient) one for ourselves and another (far more strict) for anyone else (Engel 2000, 171-3).

An objective viewer (like Stewart in this example) can find two events to be equally questionable (or equally harmless), but the person who commits the special pleading fallacy treats the two differently: one is beyond reproach, while the other is reprehensible.

Underlying the special pleading fallacy is a common psychological tendency at work, namely, the fundamental attribution error.

Put roughly, this error occurs when we explain our behavior and contrast it with their behavior: “Our own behavior we often explain in terms of the situation. […] Referring to someone else, we more often describe what that person is” (Myers 2009, 58). When it comes to explaining our behavior, the explanations are often situational; explaining their behavior draws from dispositional characteristics: “I can take another piece of the dessert because I went to the gym today. But this other person must be a glutton if they go for another piece of the dessert.” And so on, and so forth.

Although special pleading is commonly covered in many critical thinking textbooks, the fundamental attribution error is less so, even in books that discuss psychological obstacles to critical thinking. Nevertheless, the Daily Show clip brings further illustration to the special pleading fallacy, even if the underlying psychology is not part of the curriculum.

References:

Engel, S. Morris. 2000. With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s.

Myers, David G. 2009. Exploring Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Tuomas W. Manninen

Tuomas W. Manninenis Senior Lecturer at the Arizona State University – West Campus.  His research and teaching interests include critical thinking and social/political philosophy, particularly the intersection of these areas.