Word: hominem
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...well to remember that this comes from a character who does not even vote. In addition, pretense to imaginative fiction is frequently dropped for ad hominem attacks on real people: Irving Kristol, Sidney Hook and Henry Kissinger, for example, are branded as men "of limited mentality and unconvincing motive...
...other new tabloid-format papers, are busy attending to the profession's voracious appetite for scandal, scuttlebutt and shoptalk. Unlike hundreds of established legal journals, newspapers and newsletters, which concern themselves chiefly with issues and trends in the law, the new papers emphasize lawyers per se, ad hominem and in flagrante delicto. Also how and where lawyers work, what they earn, what their jobs are like, who's hot. who's not. and who's about to be indicted...
John Simon, theater critic for New York magazine, may be the meanest man on Broadway, but he rarely stoops to ad hominem attacks. He stoops to ad feminam attacks instead. Reviewing Liza Minnelli's new musical, The Act, he wrote: "I always thought Miss Minnelli's face deserving-of first prize in the beagle category. It is a face going off in three directions simultaneously: the nose always en route to becoming a trunk, blubber lips unable to resist the pull of gravity, and a chin trying its damnedest to withdraw into the neck, apparently to avoid responsibility...
DIANA TRILLING'S essays seem to invite personal, ad hominem attacks. It was tempting, for example, to open this review with a catty comment along the lines of, "Not surprisingly, the first credential Diana Trilling lists on the dust jacket of her new collection of 14 essays is that she is Lionel Trilling's widow. Not surprisingly, because--if these essays are a representative sample of her work--it is probably her only real claim to intellectual merit." That, however, would be catty...
...waited somewhat impatiently at the dock that divides up the council chambers, Al went into a rambling spiel that lasted more than 25 minutes, delving into topics as disparate as the leash law and the rising incidence of public dopesmoking. It was a sort of ad hominem filibuster, although in my assessment at the time it was a waste of time for everyone and a waste of effort on the part of a crackpot councilor. Al talked about Italian cooking, he talked about the deterioration of respect for the city council, but mostly, it seemed, he just talked. I left...