OutFoxed

Dear Mr. Baby:

Of late you have done a great many things which merit lauding, from your halfhearted acquiescence to my request to stop banging your feet on the dryer, to your three-to-four star potty days, to preceding your knocking over of Second Baby with what seem to be genuine cheers for his precarious first steps about the house. All of this is great, but you deserve the Slow Clap for having mastered, at the tender age of 30 months, many of the irrefutable argumentation styles that have been honed over many years by the major propaganda networks of our time. So here's to your future career as a conservative talk show host or political speechwriter, along with a few of my personal favorites, listed by argumentative technique: 

Obfuscation the issue, followed by a remorselessly feel-good ending

M: A, please stop waving your tortilla around, you're flinging tuna fish everywhere.
A: No, it's the same. It's fixed, and it's broken. And so it's really out there, and you're a winner. 

Projection

M: Hey you're being a little bit too loud. The baby is sleeping.
A: No you're being too loud.
M: I'm actually -
A: Shhhhhht.
M: What are you -
A: Shhhhhhhht. Mama, shhht. You're talking too loud.

Rewriting History

M: Look, sorry you have a bad taste in your mouth, but you were eating a crayon, just like I said not to do.
A: I ate a peanut butter and a cookie.
M: Looks like you ate a crayon.Just by all the blue wax on your lips.
A: No that's not right. I was eating spaghetti.

Asking for clarification, where none is needed, followed by misdirection

M: If you run over my foot again, I'll have to put your bicycle in the mud room.
A: What's a bicycle? What's a bicycle? What's a foot means? I don't know. Oh, look, it's another bee!


Simultaneous grammatical pedantry and vagueness


M: You can't put that there, because it's for Tata. It's Father's Day.
A: He's not a father! He's a Tata! And that's not that, it's my ruckskater!
M: Okay fine, but you can't have it.
A: What's a have?

Character assassination

M: Please don't put that there, it will catch on fire.
A: I don't understand what you're saying to me, your mouth is really full.
M: Uh...No it's not.
A: Please chew your food.  It's not nice.
M: I'm not eating.
A: Oh I'm sorry, I can't understand you when your mouth is full.

Citing ''statistics'' to muddle the issue

M: What are you doing there, bud?
A: Oh, it's just...twenty-hundred and five.
M: No but what are you doing?
A: Twenty-seven.  

Fear mongering

M: Uh...I don't think that's the best idea.
A: No, I'm going to rescue. It's really important. Don't be scared.


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