What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

-Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

On Saturday, during something called The Family Leader: Thanksgiving Family Forum, Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said about the Occupy Wall Street protesters, “…get a job, right after you take a bath.” I know, charming right?

I wonder which protester he was speaking about. Perhaps he was talking about Kayvan Sabeghi. Mr. Sabeghi was clean and had a job during the two tours of duty he served as an Army Ranger in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He wasn’t injured in either tour, but he was gravely injured while making his way home from the Occupy Oakland protest. He was hit in the abdomen four times by police and taken to jail where he sat for 24 hours, with a ruptured spleen but without medical attention, even though he asked for some. Oh, and Mr. Sabeghi is the co-owner of a brewery in El Cerrito; one of those job creators that men like Newt praise, when he isn’t insulting protesters that is.

Maybe he was referring to 84-year-old Dorli Rainey, who was pepper sprayed in the Occupy Seattle protests. As near as I can tell from the photos I’ve found on the Internet of Ms. Rainey, the ones where she is not doused in milk to counteract the pepper spray, she seems very clean. As to having a job, I think she deserves not to work, being 84 and all.

Newt could have been talking about the many members of the clergy, who have joined in these protests, but he would have had to take a look at the face of the Occupy movement and that seems unlikely. And besides, they likely are not a member of the correct clergy in Newt’s eyes.

No, what Mr. Gingrich was doing was what is called an ad hominem attack. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy where one attacks an opponent by pointing out a trait that others might find negative, hoping it will negate whatever their argument is. When he says, “take a bath” he’s telling his followers not just that those people are dirty, but also that they are not like them. He is setting up the old “us vs. them” scenario (another fallacy called a false dilemma). When he says, “get a job” he is saying they are lazy when 1) he has no information that most or any of the protesters are unemployed, and 2) he has no information that any have applied for work and been rejected because of their hygiene.

Newt may not even have known he was proposing these logical fallacies. He likely was making a comment he knew would get a laugh from the “The Family Leader” audience. I went to their website and found what I surmise is their mission statement, “…a consistent, courageous voice in churches, in the legislature, in the media, in the courtroom, in the public square…always standing for God’s truth.” All the ellipses are directly from their website, less you think I’m leaving something out. It’s been my experience that courageous people seldom refer to themselves as courageous.

A lot of Occupy protesters are up in arms about Newt’s comments but it’s a waste of time to be. Anyone who falls for his attack and writes off anything those protesters say are likely already solidly on the other side. Mostly what will happen is a few conservative voters will move from voting for one of the other Republican candidates to voting for Newt. Six of one…(ellipsis added by me).

It could have been worse. Mr. Gingrich could have said something about the Occupy protesters like, “It just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good.” Oh wait, Ann Coulter already said exactly that.

The Occupy protesters are not perfect. But in a world where a factory owner went from making 30 times what a worker in that factory made - likely deserved - to making 3,000 times what those workers make today, if the factory hadn’t moved to China that is, these people are doing something. Someone needs to do something.

How can they run when they know?