Thursday, June 17, 2010
THREE cheers for the man who suggested, long before Cork and Kerry even took the field in the Munster football championship this year, that a ‘Justice for Paul’ campaign be started to save time.
Galvin’s latest disciplinary problems are now a matter of public record, and they don’t really concern us.
We’re fascinated by the arguments made by his county men in the media to support him, so we dug out our old rhetoric textbook to track the classical lineage of those impassioned pleas for justice.
The most obvious is the argument ad hominem, or the argument which is directed at the man rather than the issue. Shooting the messenger is the non-Latin phrase.
Here Darragh O Sé talks about The Sunday Game panellist Anthony Tohill’s view of the Galvin-Eoin Cadogan incident last Sunday, rather than the incident itself.
"Anthony Tohill went on too much about it," said O Sé.
"If Paul Galvin was man of the match, then he should have got the man of the match. He kept on going on about Paul Galvin not being in line for it because of that incident."
Speaking to Newstalk, O Sé added: "He (Tohill) didn’t have to be judge and jury on the whole thing. It wasn’t his place to be in that situation and I just felt he should know better."
The former star midfielder for the Kingdom then drove on with a classical argumentum ad consequentiam, the fallacy where a proposition is deemed to be true because belief in it has good consequences for the person who is making that argument.
"I don’t think Paul went out deliberately, there was just a bit of grappling and shoving,’’ O Sé said. "To be fair to Eoin Cadogan, he didn’t go down in a heap. He got on with it and I thought the referee dealt with it."
O Sé wrapped up his radio interview with a version of the argumentum ad ignorantiam, wherein a speaker suggests that a proposition must be wrong because he or she is incapable of accepting that it may be true.
"In situations like that when people come close to pushing and shoving, it happens so fast and I don’t think anyone in their right mind would put a finger in a guy’s mouth," said O Sé. "It doesn’t make sense."
In a newspaper interview, O Sé displayed his versatility with the argumentum ad metum, in which an orator attempts to build support for his views by creating an alternative scenario which most people would find unappealing.
"What a tragedy it would be for the GAA if they lost the likes of Paul," O Sé told the newspaper. "How entertaining would the championship be without a player like that?"
Good question.
O Sé was joined on the airwaves this week by another Kerry legend, Mikey Sheehy, whose nimble footwork on the field of play was replicated by some dexterous oratory.
The former star forward launched a classic argumentum ad verecundiam – appealing to a figure of authority as an infallible support for one’s thesis. In this case, the referee Pat McEneaney was the figure of authority invoked.
"There was certainly pressure put on Pat McEnaney, there is no doubt he is the best referee in the game," Sheehy told RTÉ’s ‘Morning Ireland.
"If Pat McEnaney was happy with what happened during the game, I felt it should have been left at that. "He was quite close to the incident when it happened and it was difficult for him to make a call. His linesman was quite close to it and he didn’t even deem it to warrant a yellow card."
(Mikey was echoing the words of Jack O’Connor from earlier this week, when the Kerry manager said: "I’m pretty sure he’ll [Galvin] be okay, you have the best referee in the county looking at it from two yards away and there was a bit going on, on both sides").
Finally, Sheehy gave an airing to one of the best-known fallacies, the argumentum ad populum, commonly used to convince one’s audience that a belief which is widely held is true – in addition to being popular.
In this case, that belief suggests Paul Galvin is much maligned and victimised because of his past indiscretions.
"I suppose there was a bit of baggage from the National League game when both of them were sent off for a bit of a handbag incident," said Sheehy. "I think he is suffering because of previous misdemeanours, or so-called misdemeanours."
All in all, an interesting approach adopted by everyone concerned, and emphatic proof that the art of elegant argument is alive and well and living in Kerry. Not that we ever doubted same. Just as long as they come to praise Paul Galvin, not to bury him.
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