If the right wingers REALLY want to keep pushing that Bill Maher button...

[backscatter712]

9. EXACTLY! Bringing up Maher is a distraction, formally known as a Tu Quoque fallacy.

I'm going to be bringing up Tu Quoque over and over and over again - that's what's necessary to get more people to understand the tactics of the right-wingers.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem-tu-quoque.html

Fallacy: Ad Hominem Tu Quoque

Also Known as: "You Too Fallacy"

Description of Ad Hominem Tu Quoque

This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that a person's claim is false because 1) it is inconsistent with something else a person has said or 2) what a person says is inconsistent with her actions. This type of "argument" has the following form:

Person A makes claim X.
Person B asserts that A's actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X.
Therefore X is false.
The fact that a person makes inconsistent claims does not make any particular claim he makes false (although of any pair of inconsistent claims only one can be true - but both can be false). Also, the fact that a person's claims are not consistent with his actions might indicate that the person is a hypocrite but this does not prove his claims are false.

Besides, Maher's already been punished for his nasty remarks - he lost his show and got exiled to HBO.