> If I call Carrol an asshole, everyone knows i'm being rude.
>
> If I chose to ... maintain that he's a screeching
> homeless guy typing in from the library and he's not a retired
> professor at all, then what have i done?
You've lied, haven't you? I don't mean you-you of course, but the imaginary you of your hypothetical case.
An ad hominem is one thing. Smith knows Latin and owns a little sailboat, so clearly he knows nothing about the Working Class. None of the factual claims is a lie, but it's still a fallacy, and even as rhetoric, a feeble line of argument at best -- hardly worth refuting. Nobody is really convinced by it who isn't already convinced.
But a lie is another thing, and a lot more serious. Somebody might be convinced by a lie.
You're quite right to say, though, that refuting a lie may cost more than it buys you. The locus classicus is that anti-Semite thing that Zionists love to deploy. If you turn aside to answer it, they win. But if you don't turn aside to answer it, then they go unanswered.
I think you just have to laugh it off, and wait until the gambit has become so familiar and tired that nobody pays any attention anymore.
Henry Ford, I believe, once said, "never explain, never apologize." Not bad advice, though a little over-generalized. I'd say, with Gilbert & Sullivan, "hardly ever".
-- --
Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com
"I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President, and I think I will go along with them."
-- Barack Obama
(Okay, okay, it was really Calvin Coolidge.)