JAQing off
JAQing off is the act of spouting accusations while hiding behind the claim that one is "Just Asking Questions." The strategy is to keep asking leading questions in an attempt to influence listeners' views; the term is derived from the frequent claim by the questioner that they are "just asking questions," albeit in a manner much the same as political push polls.
The term was coined by "Marquis de Carabas" on the JREF forums,[1] after they had dealt with one too many 9/11 truthers,[2] with this later description:[3]
| JAQing off - 1. the act of spouting accusations while cowardly hiding behind the claim of "just asking questions". 2. asking questions and ignoring the answers.
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It is related to Betteridge's law of headlines[wp][4]:
| Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no." The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it. |
Contents |
[edit] Famous JAQers
- Loose Change is a great example of JAQing. Replete with semi-truths and highly questionable leaps of logic, this documentary purports to show that the US government was behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
- Glenn Beck is one of the most prolific JAQers. His technique of raising issues without actively accusing anyone was parodied on the Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990 website,[5] which Beck tried and failed to shut down in 2009 by filing a dispute over the domain name.
- Equally notorious is Neil Cavuto, who has been known to JAQ off with lines like "Have the Democrats Forgotten the Lessons of 9/11?" or "Is the Liberal Media Helping to Fuel Terror?" Jon Stewart gave a name not to the concept of JAQing off but to what might elsewhere be known as a question mark: the "Cavuto Mark."[6] Stewart subsequently "just asked" if Cavuto's mother was a whore. Not that he meant anything by it. Obviously.
- Fox News — as in "Up next, is Obama really a fascist, socialist, gay, Muslim, atheist Kenyan?"
[edit] Caveat
The Socratic method can be a legitimate means of stimulating critical thinking. Obviously not all questioning is done from a position of cowardice; in some cases, a person may simply not feel confident enough in their position to make an assertion, so they instead ask a question in order to gather more information or elicit others' thoughts before making up their mind about a particular stance.
JAQing takes over when the answers are already well known, where the question embodies a point refuted a thousand times, or where the questioner exhibits wilful ignorance.
[edit] See also
- Concern troll
- Gish Gallop
- Question! Evolution!! (so far, no acknowledgement of Answers! from Evolution!!)
- Jacking Off
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=1921219#post1921219
- ↑ 9/11 Truther Dictionary
- ↑ http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2072757&postcount=45
- ↑ http://www.technovia.co.uk/2009/02/techcrunch-irresponsible-journalism.html
- ↑ Now gone
- ↑ http://www.newshounds.us/2006/09/14/jon_stewart_explains_the_cavuto_mark.php
| Articles about logical fallacies | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Formal fallacies | |||||
| Affirming the consequent | Denying the antecedent | ||||
| Informal fallacies | |||||
| Red herrings | |||||
| Conditional fallacies | |||||
| Fallacious argument styles | |||||
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JAQing off | |||||